Room for Rent
by ICanStopAnytime
Summary: When Tami's single mother can't pay the mortgage, she advertises a room for rent. Eric Taylor can't get along with his father. He's ready to move out, even before he finishes high school. And it just so happens there's a room available…
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** _This is an edited re-post of a story I removed from the archives over two years ago to scavenge it for parts for an original novel I was writing. I never ended up finishing that novel, and I decided to leave it in a drawer. So I'm reposting the fanfic. There will be some tweaks as I re-post it, but likely no lengthy additions. If you missed it the first time around, please read and comment! (Or, even if you want to read it again...) Your feedback is much appreciated!_

 _I know I write a LOT of Eric and Tami backstories, but I have fun exploring different possibilities of how they got together and what their parents might have been like. We are given so few hints in the show. Tami's a lot different in this story than in some of my other backstories, but I know she told Julie she was a "wild child," so I am exploring that possibility here._

 **[*]**

Mo McArnold's 1985 Chevy Camaro was in the shop. That was a shame, because his father had just bought it six months ago for his sixteenth birthday. But Mo had been out doing a bit of joy riding with Tami on Saturday night, and while he was kissing her rather than watching the road, he'd lost control and hit a guardrail. Thankfully no one had been hurt, other than Mo's baby, the car, but that meant Tami needed a way home from school until it was repaired. God knew she wasn't taking the bus. Mo lived a half mile from the school and could walk, but she was eight miles out, more in the country than in the town.

"Don't worry, baby doll. I'll get my second string to give you a ride," Mo said.

"Your what?" Tami asked.

"Taylor. QB2." Mo, though only a junior, was the starting quarterback of the high school football team, and he'd owned the field all season, leaving Eric Taylor to hover on the sidelines and occasionally venture to suggest plays to one of the assistant coaches, the only one who didn't tell him to shut up and sit down.

"That guy who never drinks at the football parties and always leaves thirty minutes into them?" Tami asked. Taylor was always rushing off to his night shift at the gas station.

"Yeah. Nicole's boyfriend."

From what Tami had heard, perky, pretty, conventional Nicole Thomas had been dating that Taylor kid ever since eighth grade. Seemed like a match made in heaven, given how boring he must be. "Fine, if that's my only way home."

"Well, he's got his own pick-up. Sort of. I just hope you survive the ride home." When Tami shot up her eyebrow, Mo explained, "Piece of shit, but Taylor's damn proud of it. He scrimped and saved for the thing. He's had that paper route since he was twelve and he must mow five lawns a week on top of the gas station gig." Mo smirked. "I don't know how he also finds the time to keep that bench warm with his ass."

[*]

When Tami climbed into Eric's black, rusty, beat up Ford pick-up, settling down on the far right side of the passenger seat against the window to avoid having to sit on the duct tape that covered a large tear in the fabric, she lit up a cigarette. He asked her please not to smoke in his truck. She cranked down the window, let in the chilly early November air, and flicked the cigarette out testily. "Sure," she said, "I wouldn't want to mar its pristine beauty."

Eric didn't respond to her sarcasm. Instead he reached out and adjusted the rearview mirror, which looked like it was hanging on by a thread.

She glanced at him and counted three pimples on his baby-smooth face. He didn't have that dark scruff that made Mo look like a half-man, and his lips were pressed tight. She hadn't run into Eric Taylor often, but she wondered if he ever smiled. If he did, she hadn't seen it. He turned and glanced at her, his lips twitching from a straight line to a near frown, as if he was biting down on his back teeth. She'd never been this close to him, face to face like this, and she was a little startled by the unusual shade of his eyes, all those varied flecks of color swimming in a hazel sea. Tami looked out the window.

When they got to her house, Eric didn't do what Mo usually did. The first thing Mo always did was to french kiss her, and of course Eric wasn't going to do that, but the second thing Mo always did was to peel off as soon as she slammed the door of his Camaro. Instead, Eric just idled there, waiting to see if she got in her house safely. Tami hadn't realized that was what he was doing at the time. She assumed he was probably just checking out her ass.

She rifled in her book bag and cursed. Where the fuck were her keys? She dropped the gray bag on the cement stoop that was cracked in four places and blackened all over in little circles by the snakes Shelley had lit off there last fourth of July. Tami's mom had bought her a _pink_ book bag for her birthday, which she'd promptly deposited at the same thrift store where Mom had bought it, and then picked up this gray one.

That was Mom for you. Practical, recycled gifts only. And fucking pink? Seriously? Tami wasn't a little girl. She was seventeen, but her Mom wanted to pretend Tami wasn't a woman, that she was still innocent. So between lectures about the evils of boys and adding new rules to the "family rule list" (Mom liked to pretend they were still a real "family" too), she threw pink things at Tami. Not that Mom had time to make sure Tami used them. Mom was always at work, at one of her two jobs, either at the morning shift or the evening shift, or on some days both, and then there was the every-other weekend shift. What else could Mrs. Hayes (she still called herself "Mrs.") do with no husband, no high school degree, and two daughters?

"Shit!" Tami muttered, zipping the backpack up with a violent jerk. Shelley had a key also. She'd be home from the junior high in a half hour. Tami wouldn't have to wait long. She bent down again and pulled her pack of cigarettes from the backpack, and that was when she heard Eric Taylor's pick-up crank off, the hard sputtering of the engine grow suddenly silent, and the front door creak open.

Eric Taylor's footsteps crunched over the gravel that passed for a driveway at the Hayes house. Tami slapped her pack of cigarettes against her palm and turned slowly to look at him, her eyes lifted to the gray-blue fall sky. "What do you want?" she asked.

"Did you lose your key?" he asked.

"Yeah, Einstien, I lost my key. My sister will be home soon." The junior high got out twenty-five minutes later than the high school.

She slid the cigarette between her lips, and dug in her jeans pocket for the lighter Mo had given her. He'd had it engraved with a little heart. Romantic, that guy. She shouldn't be sarcastic about it. He _was_ more romantic than any boyfriend she'd had previously. Not that she'd ever had a boyfriend for more than three weeks before. Still, she'd been hoping for flowers instead of a lighter. Not _pink_ flowers. But flowers. She couldn't find the lighter. She'd lost that too. Fucking fantastic.

Uninvited, Eric Taylor sat on the stoop, next to her respectably gray backpack. Tami knew Eric was about as tall as her boyfriend, but she didn't realize quite how tall he was until he stretched his legs out over and down the three stairs and his heels rested on the barren patch of earth at the bottom. He must have had an inch even on Mo. Last year, Mo nicknamed Eric "Lanky," but he wasn't anymore. Sometime, somehow, he'd gotten muscles. Maybe it was all those lawns he mowed over the summer. Maybe he carried the lawnmowers on his shoulders from house to house. Still, he wasn't exactly _lean_ now, not really, not like Mo. He'd gone from lanky to stocky in one summer.

"What are you doing?" Tami asked.

"I'll wait with you. Make sure you get in. If not, I can drive you to the library or wherever until your parents get home."

She snorted. "The library? Is that where you like to hang out in your free time?"

"I don't have free time. Or Mo's. I can take you to Mo's."

"I don't need you to wait with me," she insisted.

"I'd like to make sure you get in."

Tami shrugged and sat down on the stoop, the gray backpack between them, like a dividing line. "Got a light?" she asked.

"I don't smoke," he said. "It's not good for my game."

She laughed. "What game? Do you carve tic tac toe on the bench when you're sitting there?" Not that he actually sat on the bench. He was always standing and hovering on the sidelines, bugging the coaches. Mo said he had a thousand ideas for plays. Tami had seen Eric once, in the cafeteria, ferociously sketching play diagrams on napkins while his girlfriend Nicole prattled on cheerfully across from him about her day. Eric had nodded occasionally in her direction. It would suck to have a boyfriend like that, who didn't look at you when you talked to him. Mo looked at her. Winked at her. Licked his lips in her direction. Okay she hated that last one. And the winking. That was getting annoying too. But at least he looked at her.

But Tami wasn't Nicole. She wouldn't put up with that crap, and cheerfully prattle on like that. If her boyfriend dared to sketch in front of her when she was talking, she'd grab those napkins and shove them down her shirt. She knew how to get a guy's attention. Boys were all the same in the end, when it came to that.

"I _did_ get some time on the field this season," he said tensely. "And Coach Mackey used one of the plays I suggested in the last game. That's how Mo got that surprise touchdown."

"Mo got that touchdown because Mo's Golden Mo." She half laughed when he said it. Mo had given himself his own nickname, and eventually the rest of the team had followed his lead. Maybe not Eric Taylor. She'd never heard Eric call him "Golden Mo," but then, it wasn't as if she hung around Eric that much either. Tami shifted on the stoop and felt a discomfort and realized she'd put the lighter in her _back_ pocket. She fished it out and lit her cigarette.

Eric stared silently at his feet for a while. He was wearing knock-off Reeboks. Who did he think he was fooling? Just admit you're poor. Tami never had a problem admitting that.

She was picking a bit of tobacco off her tongue when he startled her with an attempt at polite conversation. "How'd you like the game last Friday?"

She knew Eric Taylor loved football and not just because he played it. She had overheard him gushing some stupid thing to Mo about how it was so much more than just a game, that it was a way to test your limits, a way to build character.

"I don't give a damn about football," she said deliberately. "It's a stupid game." Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him grow tense again. She liked making him tense, though she didn't quite know why. Maybe it was because he stood for everything she was determined not to be: clean-cut, studious, focused, dependable, boring. Or maybe she just wanted him off her stoop, and saying she didn't need him there hadn't worked.

"Then why do you go to all the games?" he asked. "Why do you date football players?"

"I can answer both questions at the same time – their asses look nice in those uniforms."

Now she'd made him _really_ uncomfortable. His valedictorian-to-be, glee-club girlfriend never swore at all. Nicole Thomas was the sweet, cute girl, the one everyone knew would be voted "best to take home to parents" next year. Tami had also heard that Eric never cussed in front of girls, whatever he might say among his football buddies.

Well, if she was going to have to sit here and wait with him, at least she could amuse herself. She was going to get Eric Taylor to cuss in front of a girl. "Just a stupid game," she repeated. "Silly boys running around with a pigskin, giving all their energy to some stupid game most of them are going to be too broken down and out of shape to play ten years from now, wrapping their whole lives up around it, so they've got nothing left to define them when they grow up, except half of them probably aren't going to grow up, they're going to become boosters or coaches and stay little boys forever, always thinking some dumb game is important." She took a long drag on her cigarette and then blew the smoke right in his face.

"Why do you act like such a bitch?"

She shoots. She scores. Eric Taylor. Cussing in front of a girl.


	2. Chapter 2

Tami Hayes smirked. Eric Taylor had said the word all right. _Bitch_ had come right out of his straight, clean, narrow mouth. "Because I _am_ one," she answered.

"If you _were_ one," he said deliberately, "you wouldn't have to try so hard to _act_ like one."

What was that supposed to mean? She flicked her ash over the side of the stoop, onto a patch of dead earth that was growing larger in the midst of the straining green grass.

Eric's statement made her uncomfortable. It hit a little too close to the mark. Tami's mom had wanted to hold her and Shelley to strict moral and academic standards, but she hadn't been able to. She simply hadn't been around to do it. The summer before tenth grade, when Tami had been forced to move to this God-forsaken, small, west Texas town, she'd been put in charge of her little sister before and after school while Mom worked. By the end of her sophomore year, Tami was in all out rebellion. She wore overly revealing clothes, smoked in the girl's bathroom, and deliberately refused to earn more than a C+ in any of her classes. She didn't give a damn about football, but she always dated football players anyway, not because she loved the game or wanted to be popular, but because so many of them were bad boys. She'd lost her virginity to one of them at a party and then gone on to fool around with two more.

But it had made her sick, the way they treated her…the way she let herself be treated. It had seemed a good way to lash out at first, but there were other ways, ways that weren't going to risk giving her an STD, weren't going to have her scrubbing herself in a scalding hot shower at night while the tears streamed down her face, the shower turned up all the way and the fan on high so no one would hear her crying. So this past September, she'd settled on Mo. He was a bit younger than the guys she usually dated, but he was the starting quarterback this year, and he was good-looking and high energy. He was smarter than he appeared to be, funny, and not too much of a jerk to bother Tami but enough of one to still offend her mom. He was the ideal boyfriend, as far as Tami was concerned. So she told him she wouldn't put out unless he agreed to go steady, and he accepted her terms.

"I'm going to tell Mo you called me a bitch," she said.

"Don't. And I didn't. I said you were _acting_ like one, which is just a statement of fact. You're just trying to start a fight between Mo and me."

"Mo and I," she corrected him, glad to be setting boy wonder straight on a minor point of grammar.

"Actually, it _is_ Mo and me. Me is the object of the preposition. It's a common mistake."

Tami rolled her eyes and flicked her ash onto the concrete stairs. "Why, are you afraid of Mo? Think he'll kick your ass?"

"He'll probably try. To defend your honor."

She snorted. "My honor?" She took another drag on her cigarette. "Look, you can go now. My sister will be here soon."

"I want to make sure she has her key too. If she doesn't, I can drop you someplace on my way to work so you can wait for your mom or dad to get home."

"I don't have a dad. My dad died when I was a freshman." Tami was surprised Eric didn't know that. They lived in a small town, and everyone seemed to know everything about everyone else's business. It was nothing like Houston, where they Hayes used to live, back when Tami had a dad, back when they could afford it. Mom had packed them up shortly after Dad bit the dust and told them real estate was cheap in this culture-barren dust bowl of a town. It _was_ cheap, but with the move, Mom was also avoiding the long line of creditors Dad had racked up in his last year of life.

"Oh, sorry," Eric said. "I know what that's like. My mom died in June."

Tami had heard about that, but there had been no reason for her to go to the funeral. She barely knew Eric and had never met his mom. "Bullshit," she said

"Excuse me?"

"I said bullshit. That's bullshit, saying you know what it's like to have your dad shoot himself just because your mom died of cancer. She didn't _choose_ to die. She didn't up and leave you."

Eric's mouth dropped open in a perfect cartoon picture of shock. The suicide of Robert Hayes was not a widely known truth even in their old Houston neighborhood. In fact, Tami had never told anyone before, and to this day, her mother still insisted Robert Hayes had died in a hunting accident. But who the hell hunts in the backyard in January and manages to accidentally shoot himself in the head? Tami was the one to find the body, when she came home from school that day in 9th grade while her mom was out grocery shopping. So Tami knew. Whatever her mom said, she knew.

What she didn't know was why she was admitting this truth to Eric, other than that she was pissed off. Pissed off that when her father suddenly lost his job and got into serious debt by gambling, he took the easy way out. Pissed off that Dad left Tami and Shelley at the mercy of their increasingly bitter mother, who as a single mom had been forced to go back to work after spending fifteen years as a housewife. Pissed off that the all-American, polite, rule-abiding backup quarterback thought he could have anything in common with her, that he could even begin to imagine what her life was like.

"You don't know what's it like," she spat. "And your dad manages to earn a living _and_ be there for you."

The surprise and embarrassment faded from Eric's face when she said this, and he laughed sharply. " _Be_ there for me? My dad? Are you kidding me? You know why I work so many hours at the gas station and mow lawns whenever I can even though I've got school and football practice and a girlfriend to juggle?"

He considered a girlfriend an object to be juggled? A chore? They must have one hot relationship, him and Nicole. Tami motioned to his truck. "So you can maintain that piece of shit?"

"Well, yeah, I worked to buy that. I didn't just get keys handed to me on a silver platter the day I turned 16 like Mo did. But now I've got a new financial goal. I can't stand my father. So I've been saving up. I'm going to move out as soon as I can, get an apartment in someone's basement or something."

"But he's supportive of you. He comes to all your games. He's always there." Mr. Taylor was a permanent fixture in the first row of the bleachers, and sometimes he'd come down to the sidelines to speak to the coaches. Tami's mom would never be at any of their activities like that. Mom didn't have the time. Not that Tami and Shelley actually _had_ any activities. Who cared about that extracurricular shit? Shelley had been a cheerleader for about a week last year, in seventh grade, when she was kicked off the squad for getting in a cat fight with another girl and leaving a two-inch fingernail scrape on her cheek. But if they _did_ have activities, Tami could bet Mom wouldn't work her schedule around them.

"Sure, so he can tell me what I did wrong the second I step off the field, or so he can chew me out for not getting _on_ the field. I didn't want to play football in junior high, but he forced me."

"What? You love football. It's more your girlfriend than your girlfriend."

"I didn't want to play because my dad rode me so hard when I was just in pee wee. And I knew he'd keep riding me. Because it's all about him. If I fail, it reflects on _him._ And it's bad for business, too, apparently, to have a son who doesn't excel at football. If he's going to sell insurance, he needs me not to mess up on a Friday night. So he's all over me all the time, about every minute I sit out, about every mistake I make when I'm in."

"Then why don't you just tell him no? Just no? You're not going to play?" Tami had no problem saying no to her mom's face. Mom would get that hard look in her eyes, and her voice would get tight, and she'd tell Tami she was bound straight for hell, but she wouldn't actually _do_ anything. Mom wouldn't come home early from work to prevent her from going out with the wrong guy, or help her with her homework, or…anything.

"Because I _do_ love football," Eric said. "I love it. I just wish I didn't have to love a game he also loves. I wish I could love something he hates."

Tami knew what that was like, but she was reluctant to admit she understood, because that might imply they had something in common. "That's stupid," she said, though she herself had tried to love everything her mother hated – smoking, drinking, and casual sex. Now she was addicted to the first, took occasional solace in the second, and had only recently abandoned the third. (She was going steady now, and she cared about Mo. Maybe she even loved him. She supposed she did.)

Tami looked down at the too long grass that was growing up in random patches beside the stoop. Maybe she should pay Eric to cut her lawn. She might, if she had any money. What little she made in her black market cigarette and booze dealings she spent on cigarettes and clothes and birth control pills.

"You want me to cut that this weekend?" he asked, as if reading her mind.

"I'll do it. I can do it."

"Mo will do it for you if you ask."

She snorted. He might. Or at least, he'd _say_ he would, "Sure, baby doll," he'd say, "anything for you, Tami." And then he'd promptly forget his promise.

Tami and Eric went on talking, on and off, mostly about how much they both hated their respective single parents, until Shelley finally showed up fifty minutes later.

"What took you so long, Shell?" Tami asked, stubbing her most recent cigarette out on the stair.

"None of your business, Tam. Who's this? Your latest boyfriend?"

"No!" Eric and Tami answered together.


	3. Chapter 3

Tami, as promised, told Mo what Eric had called her. Just as she'd gotten the precious Eric Taylor to swear in front of a girl, she was going to get him to fight. He was about the only football player who had never yet been in a school fight.

Mo confronted Eric in the main hallway of the high school with enough posturing and huffing to allow a crowd time to gather.

"Come on, Mo," Eric said. "Come on, I'm sorry. I'm sorry already. Let's just shake."

Mo ran a hand over his recent buzz cut and then stroked the three-day stubble on his cheek. "You insulted my girl, Taylor, and Mo McArnold does not tolerate any girl of his being disrespected. You got me?"

It probably wasn't good that Eric laughed.

No doubt Eric Taylor had laughed before, but this was the first time Tami had ever seen him do it. When his white teeth flashed and his tongue edged out merrily just between them, it completely transformed his face. He suddenly looked like a different person, like someone you could actually have fun with. Quiet fun, maybe, but fun.

Mo's jaw tightened. "We're going to do this like men," he said. "I'm going to let you defend yourself because I'm fair that way. So I'm giving you a chance to get ready. When I say green light, we rumble."

"Ruhahahauumble?" The question came out of Eric's mouth as more of a laugh than a word.

"Red light."

"Mo, come on man."

"Red light."

"I've apologized. Let's just shake."

"Green light!" Mo shouted and then ran and tackled Eric down on the marble floor.

For a second, Tami thought Taylor was just going to lie there and take it. How disappointing that would have been, because Mo wouldn't have beat him for long if he did that. Fortunately, Eric didn't just take it. He went from laughing to slugging wildly and angrily. Maybe it was raw instinct - - or maybe a dam had been lifted on all of Eric's pent up rage - rage at his mom's death, or at his father's criticisms, or at Mo's superior position on the team.

Even so, the fight wasn't particularly satisfying for Tami. Real life fights were never like the ones she saw on TV. There was just a lot of unattractive grunting and rolling around and flailing and grabbing and not too many punches that actually landed, and it was only about four minutes before the teachers and administrators broke it up.

The next day, Eric came to her where she was smoking alone in the far end of the back parking lot of the school. "Thanks a lot," he said.

"What?" she asked. The principal had merely given Mo and Eric in-house detention. Neither one had been suspended. And Eric didn't even get hurt all that much. "A little sore head and a scratch isn't going to kill you."

Mo's lip had been split open and his eye blackened, but Eric had nothing more visible than a slight scratch on his cheek where Mo's ring had grazed him. Mo had insisted Eric was just lucky. "Lucky!" Mo had shouted while the principal was dragging Eric off of him. "Lucky, lucky, lucky!" It would become Eric's new nickname for the rest of the year, supplanting "Lanky," which didn't suit him anymore.

"And Mo's not mad at you anymore even though you insulted his girl." She smiled sardonically. "He's totally over it. You guys are still friends." Not, she thought, that they were really friends to begin with. She suspected Eric didn't like Mo all that much, but they hung together sometimes. Tami never really got the football brotherhood thing, this willingness to hang out with people who annoyed you just because they were part of the team.

"No. I mean thanks a lot because when my dad found out I got in a fight at school, he chewed me out for half an hour, went on and on about what an embarrassment I was to him, to the Taylor name –"

"The Taylor name?" she scoffed.

"Yeah, the Taylor name. It's bullshit, I know."

Well, she guessed Eric Taylor was done not cussing in front of girls. At least done not cussing in front of her. She doubted very much he was saying bullshit to Nicole.

"But he went on for half an hour," he continued, "which I could have taken because I'm used to it. But then I was late for work, and I'm never late for work. And then he refused to let me got to this college ball game I was going to drive up to see this weekend. Nicole's going and Mo's going and half the team's going. I've been looking forward to this game all month. So thanks a lot."

"Why don't you just go anyway?"

"My dad took the keys to my truck for the week."

Her lips closed around her cigarette and she sucked. She blew the smoke out in one unbroken stream. "Then ride with your _girlfriend_ , idiot. Nicole has a car."

Eric hesitated. "My dad's going to the office this Saturday—he's got some catch up work-but he'll be home in the morning when everyone leaves. I won't be able to sneak out until he goes - and they'll be gone by then."

"Cherry ass," she muttered.

"Look, I don't like my old man, but I don't like lying to him either. _He's_ the liar, _**not**_ me." Tami had no idea what that was supposed to mean. "Until I'm on my own - "

She blew the smoke out in a derisive laugh. "- As long as you're under his roof, you're going to live by his rules? Is that it?"

"Well I did get in a fight at school, and I guess something has to happen as a consequence for that." He paused and shifted the strap of his black backpack up higher on one shoulder. "Are you going to the game? With Mo?"

Tami shook her head and tossed her cigarette on the asphalt, where she ground it out beneath the thick heel of her black, steel-tipped boot. "I've got to watch Shelley while my mom works Saturday." Not that she did much watching. Shelley was thirteen, plenty old enough to handle herself, but Tami couldn't get away with actually skipping town and leaving her alone all day, not without her mother going absolutely ballistic and grounding her. Not that Tami let herself stayed grounded either, but, well…frankly, she didn't want to go to a college football game where Mo would probably get drunk in the stands and try to make out with her publically. She usually enjoyed being with Mo, loved his wild energy, but sometimes…well, sometimes just sitting at home alone on the couch in her sweats seemed so appealing.

"Are you even going to say you're sorry?" he asked.

"For what?"

"For setting Mo loose on me when I was just trying to be nice to you. And you _made_ me say that. About you acting like…what you were acting like."

She shrugged and took a drag and blew the smoke right in his face. He shut his eyes tightly, waved the gray wisps away, and then opened his eyes. "Quite the performance," he said before walking past her. He struck her shoulder lightly with his own when he passed. He acted as though it was unintentional, but she thought it was on purpose.

For the next six weeks, they didn't exchange a single word. But getting Eric Taylor to stop talking to her as if they had something in common was what Tami had wanted in the first place.

Wasn't it?

[*]

The Bobcats had hoped to make it to State in Tami's junior year, but they were knocked out of the running early in the playoffs. The football season drew to a close, and Mo suddenly had more time for Tami, so Tami suddenly had more "babysitting opportunities." The excuse worked with her mom, who was rarely home to investigate its validity, and if Tami had to show evidence of her earnings, she could always dig out the money she'd earned re-selling, at a high mark-up, the cigarettes and the booze she bought with her fake I.D.

Still, Mrs. Hayes was vaguely aware Tami was running around with Mo and had warned her against "that spoiled, playboy quarterback." But Mo wasn't a playboy—he'd certainly dated his share of cheerleaders before Tami, but he'd stuck with her for four full months now, and it was comforting to have a steady boyfriend. Mo always had fun and exciting schemes, from joy riding in his repaired-like-new Camaro to plinking off cans from fences with rifles at his uncle's farm to sneaking into the backdoor of the movie theatre to playing strip poker in the basement while his parents were out for their weekly date nights, and these adventures kept Tami's mind off the present tension at home and the dark memories of her past.

At the beginning of January, after Mrs. Hayes did not get the Christmas tips she was expecting from _either_ of her jobs, and after her car gave out and she was forced to get a new transmission, she got the bright idea of making Tami and Shelley share a room so she could rent out Shelley's old room to a "boarder." It would be a way to bring in some desperately needed money and ensure they didn't lose the house.

A stream of applicants had come knocking on the door, most of them haggard, single men in their forties, who gave Tami an appreciative once over. Mom turned them all away. At least Tami could give her mom that much—Mrs. Hayes would never bring a man into the house who might put one of her daughters at risk. Mom didn't even date, unless the guy had met her pre-approved, good-enough-for-my-daughters checklist, which no man yet had.

On the second Sunday in January, when the Hayes girls spilled home from church, Mom immediately drew her box wine from the fridge and Shelley plopped into a chair at the table and whined, "I'm hungry!"

They never missed church. That was one thing Mom always made the time for. Maybe Tami resented the priority Mom put on church, but the truth was, she didn't mind going. It was the closest thing to family normalcy they ever experienced. Mom had to be on her best behavior there. And Tami remembered going to church with her dad, too, the way, when she was little, he'd let her climb in his lap and he'd scratch her back while she'd lean forward against the pew in front of her. He stopped going with them toward the end, those last few months, because his creditors knew he might be there.

Mo said maybe Mrs. Hayes did the church thing because she was trying to find them a stepdad, but Tami thought Mom half believed all of that religious stuff. She certainly warned Tami of hellfire often enough, but, then again, this habit of Mom's was something like a parent impotently insisting she was going to send her toddler to "time out" if he didn't stop his temper tantrum.

Mom held out the spigot on the wine box until the wobbly white sea was a half inch from the top of her glass. She plopped it down on the short, cheap, golden yellow laminate countertop with a slight tink and told Tami to start cooking the soup.

"Why is that _my_ job?" Tami asked.

"Because it's _my_ job to pay for your clothes and food and the roof over your head!" Mom yelled. "Least you can do is heat up some soup! Or are you too precious for that now? Too busy failing your classes?"

Mom constantly railed about Tami's academic failures, but it wasn't as though she ever said, "Let's study for this test together."

"Well how's that GED doing for you, Mom?" Tami shot back. Mom had dropped out of high school, but after Dad shot himself, she'd decided to get her GED, hoping it would raise her employment prospects, but it hadn't made a lick of difference. She still worked the same two jobs, waitressing and cutting hair.

Mom was gripping her wine glass so tightly that it looked like the stem was about to snap. Shelley wrapped her arms around her head and lowered her face to the table and muttered, " _Stop. Tami. Mom. Please. Stop."_

A knock on the door saved Tami from her mom's response. Mom marched off to answer it. Tami followed two steps behind and was surprised to find Eric Taylor standing there. They'd crossed paths in school over the past few weeks, but they'd had nothing to say to each other, and Tami couldn't imagine why he'd be on her doorstep.

Eric looked over Mrs. Hayes shoulder at Tami and seemed momentarily stunned. That was when Tami remembered she was wearing her Sunday best, a classy, attractive, but modest dress. She must not look at all herself. Normally she liked to show a lot of skin, to inspire male attention, but this much more restrained outfit was oddly drawing Eric's gaze.

"You better not be here for Tami," Mom said tightly, and Eric's eyes snapped away from Tami's figure. "She's not allowed to see boys on Sundays."

Sundays my ass. She wasn't "allowed" to see boys any day, really. Not that Mom was around to enforce the rules.

"No, ma'am. I have a girlfriend and it's certainly not Tami."

Did Eric really have to throw in that _certainly_?

"I'm just here about the ad." He held up the newspaper, where he'd circled Mom's ad for a "boarder."

"You must think I'm out of my mind," Mom said, "if you think I'm going to let a teenage boy live in this house with my girls."

Tami knew Eric was looking to get out of his dad's house, but why would he want to come into this nest of vipers? She supposed he had no idea the mess he'd be getting into.

"You _are_ a teenager aren't you?" Mom asked. "Still in high school?"

"Yes, ma'am. We met, remember, when your car broke down in December and I gave you that free tow to the gas station at midnight."

"I remember. But I'm looking for a _female_ boarder. And why aren't you living with your parents?"

"My mom died last summer, ma'am, and my dad and I…well, we could use a little space from each other is all."

Mom looked him up and down. "I don't see any bruises," she said.

"He doesn't… _beat_ me, ma'am. We just don't get along."

"Unless he beats you," Mom insisted, "you've got no business striking out on your own. I never heard anything so ridiculous as a teenage boy moving out of his own house just because he can't get _along_ with his father. You can shuffle off, young man." She began to shut the door, but he threw his hand up and caught it on the edge.

"I'll pay the first two month's rent in advance," he said. "And I'll mow your lawn for you all year long, and I'll cook dinner Monday nights, because that's my evening off from the gas station."

Damn, what did his father _say_ to him that was worth paying all that just to live somewhere else? How bad could it be living with Mr. Taylor? It certainly couldn't be worse than the fights Tami had with Mom. But boy did Eric Taylor know the way to her mother's heart, because Mom opened the door again.

"You so much as look at one of my daughters the wrong way," she said, "and you're out of this house, no refund of any pre-paid rent."

"Yes, ma'am."

Shelley, who had by now emerged from the kitchen, looked at Tami and mouthed, "Holy shit."

No kidding holy shit. All of mom's talk about not being alone with boys, and she was going to let one _live_ with them?

Tami rolled her eyes, walked by her sister, and whispered, "Well, bullshit walks and money talks."


	4. Chapter 4

It was weird at first, having Eric Taylor sleeping down the hall from her. Almost as weird as sharing a room with Shelley again. So Tami avoided being home as much as possible. A lot of that time she spent hanging out with Mo, but sometimes she just wandered a trail along the lake in the dark, smoking, and thinking, or trying not to think. The time she _did_ spend at home, she was relieved to find Eric either out at work or hauled up in his rented room. He spent a lot of time in that room, doing push-ups or sit-ups or studying or drawing play diagrams or whacking off to his tame fantasies or whatever it was he did in there. Tami didn't want to guess.

He didn't seem to mind being alone. Not a social butterfly, that one. He went out with Nicole every Saturday night and went to church with Nicole's family on Sunday mornings. That was it as far as his social calendar went. He worked Tuesday through Friday from 7 PM to midnight at the gas station, Saturday from nine to two, and Sunday from three to eight. He delivered newspapers every morning. Tami supposed he would start mowing lawns again too, in the spring, when the brown began to green and grow again. "How are you going to squeeze in spring training?" she asked, and he said he always scaled back his gas station hours during training and the football season. In spring and fall, he didn't work Fridays at all.

One morning in February, Mo called to tell Tami he was cutting school to go with a teammate to hang out in "the big city," which only meant Big Spring, and did she want to come? The problem was the teammate he was cutting with was one Tami had fooled around with. Tami carried a small flame of resentment for every guy she'd let have sex with her, every one of whom—except Mo—had promptly moved on. She hated them, hated herself, and hated her dad for not being there to stop her from doing what made her hate herself. "No. I think I need to go to school," she said.

Mo laughed. " _Need_ to? Okay, baby doll. Whatever you want. But you and I are still on for Valentine's, right? I got something special planned." Something special meant going to one of the two sit-down restaurants in town. They'd be waited on and everything, and Mo would splurge on desert.

"Sure," she said, and when she hung up the phone, she asked Eric, who was sitting at the kitchen table hastily finishing up his math homework, if she could hitch a ride to school with him.

"Okay, but I leave in five minutes," he said, not looking up from his sheet of paper.

Tami hadn't even taken her shower yet. "School doesn't start for almost an hour."

His pencil scribbled quickly across the page. "Got to deliver papers on the way."

They left in fifteen minutes, when Tami got herself together, and not without a lot of grumbling from Eric about how he was going to be tardy.

"What do you care?" she said as she yanked shut the passenger's side door with a loud creak. Those hinges needed some serious oiling. They were rusted straight through. "It's not like you'll get in trouble for it."

"I don't like being late," he said. "For anything." He reached back and slid open the glass that separated the cab of the pickup from the bed. "Papers are in there," he said.

"Your point being…."

"Well, you're making me late. I'll drive. Least you can do is toss them out the window for me."

She muttered about it, but she did it. He'd slow down just a little at each house, and she'd catapault the newspapers out the open window. It was surprisingly exhilarating, chucking those papers with all her force, the cold February air whipping in through the window.

"Ten points if you hit that dog," he said at one house.

"What are you, a serial killer?" she asked. "You like to torture animals?"

"Just that one. Trust me, you would too if you delivered papers on bike to this house, like I did before I got my driver's license. That dog cost me a ten speed."

Tami didn't hit it, but she got close, and the dog jumped and squealed as Eric peeled off laughing. Tami found herself laughing too. When the last paper was delivered, she rolled up the window and fixed her hair. "You got big Valentine's plans with Nicole?" she asked.

"Yep."

"Proposing?"

The truck swerved suddenly in the lane, and he righted it. "What? No. I'm sixteen." He'd be seventeen this summer, a few months before Tami turned eighteen.

"Well, you've been steady with her ever since junior high, and everyone expects you to get married when you graduate."

"Everyone? They do? Who's everyone?"

She shrugged. "Mo."

"Well, no, I'm not proposing tonight. And don't go making her expect that either."

"When do I ever talk to Nicole?" Tami looked back at the bed of the pick-up. "Where do you guys manage to have sex?" she asked. "You don't have a back seat on this piece of junk." Not like Mo's leather-cushioned Camaro. "Do you put sleeping bags in the bed or something?"

A crimson flush clawed its way across Eric's cheeks. "That's not really your business."

"Nicole has a car though, right? It has a backseat I suppose."

The red in his face was draining and his knuckles were whitening on the steering wheel.

"You two _do_ have sex, haven't you?" she asked.

"Is there a reason you think any of this is any of your business?" He yanked the steering wheel abruptly to the left and rolled into the school parking lot. Sliding into a space, he jerked the truck into park.

Tami laughed. "You're so easy to provoke."

"Glad I can be your soft target." He turned off the ignition and opened the door.

"Soft?" she said with a smirk, and then laughed. "Ironic choice of words given the circumstances."

Instead of getting out of the truck, he slammed the door shut and turned on her, eyes burning. "What is _with_ you, Tami? What have I ever done to insult you? It's like you _want_ people to hate you. It's like…like you're trying…"

"Trying to what? Tell me, Dr. Freud, what am I trying to do? "

He sighed. "Let's just try to get along. We have to live in the same house."

"Well that's your fault, not mine. I didn't invite you through the door. What's so bad about living with your dad, anyway?"

Mr. Taylor had called the day Eric moved into the Hayes household. Tami had answered. Eric was fixing dinner—it was his Monday off—dinner duty day—so he'd been standing right there next to the kitchen phone, but she'd said, "I'll have to check if he's available." She'd covered the mouthpiece. "It's your dad." "Not here," he'd said. "Sorry, he's not here," Tami said into the phone. Mr. Taylor called again the next Monday, and the next, but Eric was never available.

When Eric didn't answer, Tami repeated, "Really, what's so bad about living with him? You're willing to live with my criticism, but not his?"

Eric rubbed his forehead. "See, difference is, Tami, I don't need your respect." He threw open the door with the force of his shoulder and slid out of the truck.

She sat there for a moment longer, watching her classmates flood into the school. Of course he didn't need her respect. Who _would_ he feel the need to earn the respect of Tami Hayes? She didn't respect anyone. Not even herself.

She climbed down from the pickup, slapped the lock down, and grabbed her backpack. Time to go through the motions at school. Such a waste of time, since she wasn't planning to leave with a diploma.

[*]

Mo wined and dined Tami on Valentine's day. He told her to get a dinner salad _and_ order the flank steak, and they split a fudge brownie sundae on top of it all. His gift to her—a sexy pair of red panties. Apparently he'd bought them on his school-cutting journey to Big Spring.

They didn't stay out overly late. It was a school night, and she'd told her mom she was babysitting. Mo barely came to a stop outside of Tami's driveway when he returned her and sped away before she even had her key in the door, so Mom wouldn't know she'd been with him.

When she got in, the house was dark, except for the light streaming from under the door in the room she shared with Shelley. She went to the kitchen to get a drink of water and, through the window over the sink, saw Nicole's car pull up. Eric usually drove on their dates, but tonight Nicole had apparently driven for a change. Maybe it was a backseat sex night. Nicole's special Valentine's gift to Eric.

Tami saw Eric lean over in the passenger's seat and kiss her. _Tame_. Just as Tami had suspected. Sure, the kiss went on and on, but it looked _tame_. Eric would make a boring boyfriend.

Tami looked away.

When Eric came in, he went straight to the kitchen to grab a glass of milk. He always had a glass of milk before bed, like a little kid. He didn't say hello to her. She slid into a chair at the table and began to pull on an ice-cream coated spoon Shelley had left out until it had become congealed to the vinyl tablecloth. "Sorry I've been such a bitch to you," she said. She'd been thinking about his words that day in the school parking lot. She'd been feeling…what was this feeling? _Guilt?_ _Remorse?_ "You don't deserve it."

He set his glass on the counter and put his hands palm down but didn't say anything.

A bit of the puke green vinyl pulled off the table cloth when Tami pried the spoon loose. "I guess it's kind of like you said. You're just a convenient target or something." When he didn't respond, she continued, "I don't know. I just...sometimes I feel like I really need someone to hurl shit at. Like it gives me this temporary sense of relief or something. But you don't deserve that. You're a good guy."

He lifted the glass and drank from it, but he still didn't say anything. She looked at the spoon and heard the faucet turn on. They didn't have a dishwasher, so he always washed his dishes by hand and put them away immediately. He didn't want to risk raising the ire of his landlady. Tami heard the cupboard close. Would he please just accept her apology, damn it?

Finally, he spoke. "You have a good arm," he said.

"What?"

"The way you were chucking those newspapers the other morning." He walked to the entryway between the kitchen and living room and turned to face her. "Good arm. You should play softball. Mo said you used to play volleyball at your old school, but you quit for some reason. Maybe you should try softball instead. The season starts soon, but you can probably still get on the team. Sports are a good way to work out some of your rage. Football helps me anyway."

She watched him walk away. What did he know about rage? Sure, his mom had died. That probably pissed him off. It wasn't fair. But it's not like he found her lying in the back yard, the shotgun just beside her, the blood turned black, so it looked like oil on mud. It's not like Eric's mom had died before he'd even had his first date. It's not like she died in anything but a normal, expected way.

And sure, his dad criticized him, rode him hard, expected the best out of him, but at least he thought Eric was _capable_ of the best. Mr. Taylor hadn't written off his son as bound for after-life detention in a fiery pool. And at least Eric's dad _called_. Even after Eric had stormed out of the house, Mr. Taylor had called, every week, until it was clear Eric wasn't calling back. Eric's dad was there-or at least tried to be-in a way Tami's mom never was. Eric had never had to move to a new town to avoid a flood of creditors. He'd never been forced to take care of his little sister because his dad had blown his brains out and his mom had buried herself in the never-ending cycle of work and wine.

Who was Eric Taylor to think he could understand _her_?

 **[*]**

Tami asked the softball coach for a late try out. She wasn't sure why she did it, other than that she couldn't seem to shake Eric's suggestion. What if he was right? What if softball did help? What if she didn't have to feel so angry all the time?

Last season, the team had lost all but one of its games. Coach Baldwin didn't care that Tami didn't even know the rules, or that she was only a junior. She saw how hard and fast Tami chucked that ball, and she replaced the senior pitcher on the spot. With Tami pitching, the team might actually manage to win a few games.

Mo laughed when Tami told him she'd joined the softball team. "Fantastic," he said. "I can't wait to see you in those shorts." He winked. "Be sure to wear your new panties under them."

Mo may have mocked her decision to join the team, but he came to her games. He let out a loud "Raaaah!" whenever she struck out a batter. It wasn't as if her mom was there (she couldn't get off work for the games, of course), but Mo was.

And Eric was right. Sports did ease the rage, at least a little, not just because the training let her work out the anger, but because the games took her mind off it. She had to concentrate to play, and she couldn't be distracted by the injustice of her world.

Eric didn't say anything when she told him she'd joined the team. He just nodded. But in May, he did come to the last game of her season. He sat next to Mo in the bleachers, just sat there, the whole time, with his arms crossed over his chest, watching. He didn't stand and cheer and scream and rah when Mo did. He just watched. Tami didn't pitch as well as she normally did. The team lost. Mo came over after the game and told her, "Sorry, baby doll" and kissed her cheek. "But Golden Mo still loves you."

"Golden Mo is going to get his ass kicked by Irritated Tami if he doesn't stop talking about himself in the third person," she replied, and he laughed and said, "That's my girl. That's my girl. Just take that sass to the backseat, baby doll." Tami looked over Mo's shoulder and scanned the bleachers for Eric, to see if her game performance disappointed him or merely cemented his expectations of her, but he was gone.


	5. Chapter 5

One Friday night in early June, when Eric got back from work a little after midnight, Mo's Camaro rumbled up on the Hayes' pebble driveway just as Eric was unlocking the front door. Another football player leaned over from the front passenger's seat and honked the horn while a third hung out the rear window and shouted for Eric to get in the car. Tami watched Eric out of her bedroom window as he gestured for his teammates to quiet down, muttered something, and finally just climbed inside the car. At no time did Mo try to come inside to see Tami. He knew better than to get within ten feet of her mom.

When the guys returned Eric two hours later, he was tipsy. Tami had given up on going back to sleep and was in the living room by then, flipping through channels on the TV. She could hear his key slipping again and again against the bolt.

She got up and went back quietly into the room she shared with Shelley to throw a sweatshirt on over her tank top. Normally when she was around a guy, she pulled her tank top down lower and tighter to reveal her cleavage as much as possible, but for some reason she couldn't explain to herself, she found herself putting on extra clothes around Eric. Once covered, she unlocked the deadbolt for him and opened the door. He rocked back on his heels and then steadied himself against the doorframe.

"You're actually drunk?" she asked. "I didn't think you _ever_ drank."

He certainly never had at any of the football parties. He always had a root beer in his hands, or a cup of water, and he always left early. "He doesn't want to be a _lawbreaker_ ," Mo had said once, with a laugh, when he'd extended Eric a beer-filled cup and Eric had shaken his head. A sullen look had passed over Eric's face, then, and he had gritted his teeth, but he hadn't defended himself. He'd just taken Nicole's hand and tugged her off in the direction of the front door. Tami, on the other hand, thought it was impossible to respect the rules of adults when they were constantly changing them. When she was a little girl, the legal drinking age had been 18. Then, when she got to junior high, they raised it to 19. This fall, because of the idiots in Congress who were always trying to save the world with their random laws, it was going to become 21. Who, other than a conscientious do-gooder like Eric Taylor, could possibly take it seriously?

"Well I made an exsheption for this special day," he muttered and stumbled forward toward the living room until he fell down on the horrid brown and gold couch.

Tami sat in the non-matching white, brown, and tanned striped cloth arm chair that Mom had picked up from the Salvation Army (the creditors had taken all the nice furniture they owned when they lived in Houston) and said, "What's so special about it?"

He pulled himself across the couch by his arms and rolled over. "This is the day my mom died. Last year."

"Shit. I had no idea. I mean, I knew it happened in June, but…shit. Is that why the guys came and got you?"

Eric let one arm fall down until his hand was resting on the living room floor. "Uh-huh."

"That was actually kind of sweet of Mo." Mo could be sweet sometimes. He knew how to charm Tami, when he wanted to. The problem was, he usually wanted to when he was trying to make up for something. But Mo had his moments.

"Yeah, he's all shhhugar and spice, that guy. Golden Mo!" Eric's high-pitched laugh seemed to bounce off the ceiling.

Reflexively, Tami leaned forward and covered his mouth with her hand. "Shhh! You can't let Mom see you like this. She'll kick you out."

He licked her hand.

"Ewwww!" she cried as she jerked it away and wiped it off on the arm of the chair.

This time he suppressed his own laugh by clenching his teeth together. His whole body heaved in the wake of the silenced chuckle. When he'd recovered himself, he said, "So what? You didn't want me living here anyway."

"No, I didn't," she said, crossing her sweat-pant clad legs. Yes, the sweatpants were pink. Yes, Mom had bought them for her. But damn it, they were comfortable, and nobody who mattered could see her in the house. "And God knows I didn't want to share a room with Shelley. But I know what it's like living with a parent you can't stand. So I _do_ empathize, believe it or not."

"Really?" he asked, craning his neck to look back at her. "And here all along I thought you were a show…show…sociopath."

"Ha. Ha." He _was_ joking, wasn't he? Not that it mattered. Who _cared_ if Eric Taylor thought she was a sociopath. Better a sociopath than the victim of one.

"Maybe if you got a job," Eric said, "you could rent a room from _my_ dad." He laughed again.

"I _have_ a job," she said. "I have to do a lot of market research to resell cigarettes, you know."

"Hey, I'm curious about shomething," he said, pulling himself up and leaning back against the arm of the couch. "Why don't you try harder at shool? You aren't shstupid."

She rolled her eyes and clicked off the television. "What are you, my guidance counselor?"

"No, but maybe you shhould go to the guidansh counshelor." He put a hand to his head in the shape of a gun and pulled the trigger. "''Cause that really shucks, you know. Coming home to shomething like that."

Why had she ever told him that? She wished to God now she'd never told him. "Guidance counselors are fucking seat warmers," she spat. "They only exist to write recommendations for college. They don't actually _do_ anything to help _anyone_."

"Well the counshelor always calls me in and gives me a pencil for my Happy Half Birthday." Eric leaned over the arm of the couch and moved his face uncomfortably close to hers. "Is shomeone jealous because shhe didn't get a pencil for her Birshday?"

Tami pulled her head back as far as she could. "Go to bed," she said. "Seriously. Before my mom catches you like this and gives you one of her hellfire speeches and boots your ass out the door."

He mercifully pulled his face away and sat forward on the couch, but he didn't get up yet. "Your mom **loves** me."

Mom _did_ seem to like Eric quite a bit. Almost as if he were a pet son she'd picked up at some kind of nicely-behaved-children's market. "Trust me. She _won't_ when she sees you drunk."

"You should be eashier on your mom," he said. "You know, she has to work really hard to shhupport you guys. It can't be easy. And she lost her husband, too."

"Maybe if she hadn't hounded him so hard, he wouldn't of – " Tami fell silent and swallowed. "And you're one to talk! Did you go see your dad today? On the anniversary of your mom's death? He must be pretty torn up today. He lost his wife. Shouldn't _you_ go easier on _him_?"

"No," he said, standing up and wobbling in pace. "Fucking asshole cheated on her after she got sick." His slur was suddenly gone. "I have to be perfect. _**I**_ do." He smacked himself in the chest. "Perfect in school. Perfect on the field. I have to be the perfect _gentleman_ to every girl I meet. He's always expected all of that! But then, when my mom is dying, Mr. Perfect goes off and fucking fucks some fucking - "

He nearly fell over, and Tami rose and steadied him.

"I'm show shorry," he said, his face growing tight and suddenly contrite. "I'm not shupposed to say fuck in front of a lady."

"Lucky for you," Tami said as she slid a hand around his waist and began leading to his room, "I'm not a lady."

After tossing him on the bed and shutting the door, she went and lay in her own bed. She listened to her sister's soft snore and picked some dirt out from under her fingernail. She tried not to think about what Eric had said about her trying harder in school.

Once she'd started playing softball, she'd stop trying to do intentionally poorly on her tests. She hadn't bothered to study or do her homework, but she had made an honest effort on her tests _while_ she was taking them. As a consequence, her overall GPA had risen from a 2.4 to almost a 2.6 this year. If she actually _tried_ , she might even be able to get straight A's. But what was the point? Her junior year was coming to a close in less than a week, and she'd only have one year left to make a difference. Even if she got straight A's her senior year, she couldn't pull her G.P.A. up any higher than 2.9 by the time she graduated. No one in her family had ever gone to college, not even her father, though he'd had a decent enough income. Who was she to think she should try to be an exception? Her mom certainly didn't think she was capable.

Of course, mom hadn't actually _said_ Tami was incapable. What Mom had said, again and again, was that Tami was "busy failing." Tami might have to admit that was true if she was willing to go easy on her mom, as Eric had just suggested she do. But she wasn't sure she _was_ willing to go easy on her mom.

Tami had begun to focus her anger a little through sports. Wasn't that enough? Did she have to let up on Mom too? What if she did? What if she simply let go all of this hatred, only to find it was the only fuel keeping her alive?


	6. Chapter 6

Tami slid a pillow over her head, but the morning sun was relentless. She finally dragged herself out of bed and dressed in a black skirt that fell just above her knees (more modest than her usual June fair) and a dark green, v-neck shirt. When she ventured out of her room, she saw that Eric was not at work as usual on a Saturday morning. Instead, he was sitting on the living room couch watching some last-season football game he'd recorded on the new VHS player Mo had given her as a surprise gift.

Tami sat down on the couch with him, at the far end, leaving plenty of room for the Holy Spirit, as her mom would say. He was wearing only blue jeans and a white undershirt, and his bare feet rested on the coffee table. He acknowledged her presence with a glance and then raised his hand to his forehead and began massaging it, his neck bent and eyes slightly closed. Eric didn't ask why Tami was sitting there, and she didn't mention his drunken rant of the previous night.

Shelley walked in, plopped down in the arm chair, glared at Eric and said, "Thanks a lot! I was totally stoked to watch the episode of _Love Boat_ I recorded _,_ and then you come along. Football is so lame. You're such a dweeb, Eric Taylor! Get your grody feet off the table!"

Tami told Shelley to get lost, to go walk next door (next door being almost half a mile away) to her friend's house.

"Fine, but don't do the nasty on the couch while I'm gone, because I have to sit there," Shelley said as she rose and strutted to the front door. "Not that you would with him anyway. He's as queer as a football bat."

Eric lowered his hand from his head. "I know she still blames me for having to share a room with you, but what's with all the slang?"

Tami shrugged. "She's got a new friend who just moved in from California. It keeps her out of my way, but every day she comes back with a new phrase." Tami couldn't help but observe his haggard expression. "You want a coke? You know, for your hangover."

"Sure," he said.

"What flavor do you want? Shelley and I went shopping last week."

"Y'all get any root beer?"

She brought him a Triple XXX and sat back down again, a little closer to him this time. He thanked her before lifting the bottom of his shirt and putting it over the cap to twist it off. She saw his bare stomach and noted that he wasn't quite as taut as Mo. He probably didn't have as much free time to work on his abs. Still, Eric was in pretty good shape. As the second-string quarterback, he had to be.

"I thought they stopped bottling this," he said as brought the neck of the bottle to his mouth and took a long swig.

Tami put her elbow on the back of the couch, leaned her head against her hand, and watched the recorded game playing out on the screen. Every now and then, he'd mutter something like, "They shouldn't have run it that way" or "I'd have called a different play." She ignored him at first, but eventually she found herself asking why. Then other questions followed. She was a bit ashamed of how little she knew about football, after all the time she'd spent around football players, but Eric explained things very clearly. He taught her about the rules, the strategy, and the different plays.

When halftime rolled around, and he began fast forwarding the tape, she said, "Look, I don't think I ever properly apologized for that day I set Mo loose on you over the whole bitch thing."

"You didn't even _improperly_ apologize."

"What can I say? It was a boring day at school."

"It's a'ight," he replied. "That was months ago. And Mo and I are still friends." He stopped fast forwarding and hit play, but then he paused the game. "And…I don'tknow why, but it felt kind of good to fight him that day. Don't know what _you_ got out of it, though, except that you seem to dislike me, so I guess when his ring scratched my cheek, that was satisfying, huh?"

"I don't dislike you," she said. "You're not so bad."

"She damns me with faint praise."

"What?"

"It's a line – you know – from that Alexander Pope poem Mrs. Watson made us read in class last week?" English was the only class they actually shared. Their paths didn't cross often at school, unless they passed through Mo.

"You pay attention to that stuff?" she asked.

"It helps if you want to earn good grades."

"Why do you care so much about grades?" she asked.

"Because I don't know if I'll get enough attention to get a football scholarship next season. I might need an academic scholarship. My dad sure isn't paying for me to go to college. At least, I'm not letting him. The better question is " - he pointed his rootbeer bottle at her - "why _don't_ you care?"

"Because I'm dropping out next year, as soon as I turn 18," she said with a resolve she didn't quite feel. "So it's not really an issue for me."

"Drop _out_? Why?"

"I don't see the point. I'm not going to get into college with my grades. Might as well start working full-time. I can legally start stripping when I turn 18. And I'm sure I'll get good tips." She crossed her legs suggestively to emphasize her point.

As she expected, his eyes fell immediately to them, but he soon returned them to her face. "What does Mo think of that?"

"Why would he care one way or the other?"

Eric put his root beer down on the coffee table. "I sure wouldn't want Nicole stripping for a living."

Tami let out a low laugh.

"What?" he asked. "She's hot enough."

Nicole was pretty, surely, but the idea of that girl stripping? She'd be one long beet-red-with-embarrassment piece of flesh. The same beet-red Eric would turn if he was ever caught in a strip club.

"Sure," Tami said.

"You'd really be fine doing that? You don't mind creepy guys ogling you and" - he gestured with his hand - "shoving money down your g-string?" His dark eyelashes fluttered as he looked down at her skirt.

"Well, I certainly wouldn't mind the money. And I already deal with creepy guys ogling me even when I'm fully clothed."

He returned his eyes abruptly to the television and unpaused the game.

"I didn't mean you," she said softly. "There's nothing creepy about _you_."

He seemed irritated for awhile, but gradually he began to talk about football. His enthusiasm for it was sort of catching. Tami found herself actually enjoying the damn game, and it wasn't as if they talked about football the entire time. A half hour later, when he turned off the VCR, and the room was clothed in sudden silence, she admitted, "I don't really want to be a stripper. I was just saying that. I don't know why."

"What _do_ you want to be?" Eric asked.

Good question. What? A princess? Who was she kidding? She'd never been that, except to her own father, when she was a little girl, before he started staying out late at night gambling, before he killed himself. "I have no idea. You?"

"I want to play for the NFL, of course."

Tami's long strawberry blonde hair cascaded over the couch when she threw back her head to laugh.

"What?" he asked.

"Do you really think that's a realistic plan?"

"Well, I don't expect to be on a really _good_ team. Or to be the _star_ or anything, but, yeah, I think I can do it."

"You aren't even QB1 of the Bobcats."

"I may be soon," he said quietly.

She wondered if he had dared to make that claim around Mo. "What makes you think that?"

"Mo's not…a team player."

"Because he's a star!" she insisted.

"Yeah, well, stars fall."

Tami shook her head. "Keep dreaming, Taylor," she said, stretching her long, shapely legs out on the coffee table next to his. "Keep dreaming."

[*]

Tami had a hard time shaking Eric's words—both about her school performance and about going easier on her mom. Late one evening, while Eric was at work, Tami's mom came home from a shift that had started at five in the morning. Mrs. Hayes slid onto the couch, kicked off her shoes, and groaned.

"Want a glass of water?" Tami asked her.

Her mom leapt a little in her seat and looked around, as though it couldn't possibly be her daughter asking her that question. "Sure…" she said uncertainly.

When Tami returned with the water, her mom drained it. Tami slid into the arm chair and said, "You work really hard, Mom. You should take a break sometimes. I got hired full-time down at Dee's Diner for the summer. I'll kick in some money." Not the money she made reselling cigarettes. That was her private fund, but she'd kick in her waitressing money. "And I'll work part-time during my senior year too."

"I'd rather you concentrate on your studies."

Tami sighed. "See, this is what I get for trying to help." With one hand on the arm, she propelled herself up from the chair.

"I don't want you to help _me_ , Tami. I want you to help _yourself_."

Tami wasn't listening. She was halfway down the hall to her room, but her mom followed. Mom was going to tell her she was bound for hell, Tami was sure. That hell had a special circle for academic failures. And sluts. And then one even further down for academically failing sluts like her.

Sometimes Tami wondered if her mother even believed in hell. Mom had told her about the bogey man under her bed too, when she was a little girl, about how he would get her if she kept getting out of bed at night and coming into her parents' room.

Tami whirled on her heels. "Yeah, I know. I'm going to hell because I'm a slutty failure!"

When her mother didn't respond, didn't yell back as she usually did, Tami was forced to look into her face. She saw the dullness in her mom's once bright, green eyes, and the dark bags under them. Mom had just turned thirty-six, but she looked old. She used to be so beautiful, too, the woman who made Dad the envy of all of his friends. Tami swallowed.

Mom finally spoke. To Tami's surprise, she wasn't yelling. "Tami, please. Don't make the same mistakes I did. Finish high school. Maybe even do two years of community college if you can manage to get in. Rely on something other than boys. Something other than your looks. Something other than your hardened attitude. Rely on something that won't choose to leave, or fade, or eat you up inside."

Mom took a few more steps down the hall toward her room. When her hand was on the door handle, Tami said, "So you admit it. You admit Dad _chose_ to leave. You _admit_ it wasn't an accident."

When Mom got back from the grocery store that day, Tami was sitting on the deacon's bench on the back porch, her legs pulled up tight against her chest. Shelley wouldn't get out of school for another hour. A police officer stood next to her and spoke softly while two other officers knelt beside the body. Tami never remembered calling them. Maybe she hadn't. Maybe a neighbor had. She did remember Mom screaming, though, that high pitched wail, and then it was as if all sound had been sucked into a sudden vacuum. Tami didn't hear the sirens of the ambulance. She only saw the sharp flicker of its lights, the paramedics moving in slow motion, the body on the stretcher. The rest of the day was a black hole, until that night, when Mom sat on the edge of Tami's bed. Shelley had climbed in with Tami and was curled against her side, her cheeks stained with tears. Mom told them that Dad had been preparing to go deer hunting. He was walking out the backdoor, she said, to go around to the side yard where his truck was parked, and he'd tripped on the stairs leading down from the porch, and the gun had simply gone off.

Tami had been around guns her whole life. She knew enough to know they didn't go off just because you'd dropped them on the ground, not unless there was some kind of rare malfunction. She also knew deer season had ended a week ago and that dad always hunted with his rifle, not his shotgun. And then there was the deadly accuracy of the whole "accident." But she hadn't dared to contradict her mother then, and they'd never spoken of it since.

Mom's hand froze on the door. "Don't tell your sister. Don't _ever_ tell your sister. She never knew about him losing his job. Or the gambling. She didn't overhear our fights the way you did." Shelley went to bed earlier than Tami in those days. "Your father was her prince. She has good memories of him. She shouldn't have to grow up knowing about that." She turned her weary eyes to Tami. "Promise me you won't ever tell her."

Above them, the hall light flickered. _He was my prince too_ , Tami thought. She looked up, and the light sent a stabbing pain through her eyes. "I shouldn't have had to grow up knowing about it either." She closed her eyes against the light. In the weirdly glowing darkness that followed, she felt her mother's arms enfold her.

"I'm sorry." Mom's voice was thick with a raw emotion that Tami hadn't heard in years. Mom sometimes got angry now, she not infrequently yelled, but she didn't laugh the way she had in Tami's childhood, and she didn't cry. She no longer semeed to cycle through the full gamut of human feeling. But now Mrs. Hayes wept her words: "I'm so very, very sorry."


	7. Chapter 7

"Disgusting, Eric Taylor! Why are you scratching your balls in the kitchen!" Shelley shot him her death-ray eye daggers.

He was actually scratching his stomach, just below his sweat shirt and just above his sweatpants.

"Why are you walking around in nothing but a towel when you know you have a _boarder_?" he shot back.

"Because it's my house!" she insisted, pulling the towel tighter around herself, grabbing an apple from a bowl on the counter, and disappearing back down the hall.

"Does she shower with apples?" he asked Tami when Shelley disappeared.

Tami shrugged from where she sat at the tiny kitchen table stirring her coffee. It hadn't taken her long to adapt to the taste of beer, but she still filled her coffee one-third full of milk and dissolved within it a pixie stick's worth of sugar.

It was the first Saturday since summer vacation had started, and Mom was already at work. Eric would be leaving for his full-time gas station job shortly, and then he'd be picking up Nicole when he got off his shift—his typical Saturday routine. Tami would be working her own shift at the diner and then hooking up with Mo at some point. She and Mo didn't have any definite plans. They never did.

Eric came and sat across from her with his own mug. "Never thought you'd like your coffee sweet," he said.

"Never thought you'd have the balls to drink yours black," she retorted.

His lips curved. He smiled now when she was a smart ass with him, instead of growing all tense. They'd become friends, of a sort. Tami found it easier to talk to him than she had expected. Easier and harder. Easier because he didn't make fun of her, the way some of her so-called friends did when she began to talk about her real hopes for the future, but harder because he asked her questions about herself and made her wonder who she really wanted to be.

Eric turned a page in the Style section of the newspaper, bent over it, and dug a hand in his brown hair, which seemed to have grown darker since that day, some nine months ago, when she'd lost her key and they'd talked on the stoop. He even had a fine stubble on his cheek this morning. Not quite the clean-shaven, baby-smooth boy who had refused to let her wait alone.

"You're reading Style instead of Sports?"

"Looking at the movie times," he said. "Nicole wants to see _Ferris Bueller's Day Off_."

"Not _My Little Pony: The Movie_?"

Eric was clearly trying not to smile at the jab, but he did. "Hey, she even watches some R rated films. On occasion."

Tami slid her hands around her warm mug. "Do you think it's too late to even bother?"

Eric continued scouring the paper. "Nah. It's still playing."

Of course Eric hadn't been privy to her weaving train of thought. "No. I mean, I was thinking of trying to pull up my grades. Do you think it's too late?"

He looked up from the paper. "I think it's about time you stopped pretending to be someone you're not."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"You know what it means!" He leaned back in the pliant wood kitchen chair. "You should stop pretending to be the bad girl and start acting like your real self."

"And who is that?"

"I don't know, but whoever it is, I'm pretty damn sure it's someone awesome."

Her laugh was tinged with a charmed delight that sounded foreign, and yet somehow natural, to her.

"You should also quit smoking. You don't want to mess up that smile." He looked quickly back down at his paper. "A really high SAT score can make up for your grades, especially if you do really well next year. You _can_ still get into college."

"How am I going to pay for it? I'm certainly not getting a softball scholarship." The team had won only three of its games last season. She'd been proud of those three wins—two more than they'd had before she was a pitcher—but she had no illusions about her athletic abilities helping her through college. "Or volleyball, even if I take that up again."

"Loans. Work. You can do it." He looked back up at her.

"I'm going to be a senior next year. A _senior_." Who was she kidding, really? She was Tami Hayes. Daughter of a man who blew his brains out and a woman who got her G.E.D. at the age of 34. Who did she think she was, anyway? "It's too late."

"You're seventeen, Tami. This isn't the end of your life. It's the beginning."

"Cute. You could give motivational speeches for a living."

"You know what?" Eric flipped his newspaper shut. "I feel like saying fuck you, but I'm not going to swear in front of lady."

When he stood, she said, "You need to stop calling me that."

"Lady," he said as he began walking from the kitchen. "Lady, lady, lady, lady…."

Tami mulled over Eric's words for the rest of the day. She was thinking of them while she was out with Mo. Mo waved a hand in front of her face, saying, "Earth to Tami!" and she focused back in on him.

Late that night, when Eric got home from his date with Nicole, Tami was waiting in the kitchen. She was just standing there, leaned against the counter, and she startled him when he came in for his regular nightly glass of milk.

"Would you maybe…tutor me?" she asked. "For the S.A.T.'s?" Eric had already taken the S.A.T. his junior year, but he was planning to retake it when it was offered next year. He was hoping to do better.

He yanked open the door to the fridge and seized the milk carton. "Why me?"

"Because…" She shrugged. "I don't know. Because I'm trying to say sorry for the way I've sometimes treated you in the past. And because I'm trying to say thank you for the way you've tried to encourage me despite it."

"And asking for free help is the only way you know how to do that?"

"Pretty much."

He took a swig straight from the carton, drained the last of the milk, and threw the empty carton basketball-style in the trash. "A'ight then. We start Monday."

[*]

Over the summer, Tami's relationship with her mother gradually grew less strained. They never again mentioned that moment of weeping in the hallway, but they weren't at each other's throats anymore. Mom even said she would try to come to one of Tami's softball games next season.

Eric tutored Tami in one-and-a-half hour sessions three times a week for the SAT's. He seemed surprised at how quickly she picked up the vocabulary words and at the steady, logical way she thought through the analogies once she'd had a few explained to her as examples. It wasn't all work – they joked in between vocabulary and math drills, and talked about their hopes and plans.

Today, he sat across from her at the kitchen table while, just a room away, Shelley sat on the living room floor playing the family's Atari, screaming in frustration every time she hit a log or fell off a crocodile in Pitfall.

"God she's annoying," he said.

"I know," Tami agreed. "Hey, thanks for helping me with all this. Really." As she thanked him, she instinctively reached out and squeezed his hand. She hadn't meant anything by it. She was just grateful. She drew it back quickly when he looked down at her hand covering his. "I know with work and summer training and Nicole and all...you don't have a lot of time."

He shrugged dismissively. "Nothing to it. It's helping me prep too."

She snorted. "Like you need it. You did fine your first time. You'll probably get over 1300 this time around."

"Well, I don't mind tutoring you," Eric said.

"How's Nicole feel about you spending all this time helping me?"

"It's not taking any time away from her." He reached for a stack of vocabulary cards and began to straighten them. "She's only allowed one date a week."

"One date a week? What kind of stupid rule is that?"

"Yeah, I know. Her dad's major old fashioned. It's ridiculous. I'd never do that to my daughter." He took the bottom card from the stack and put it on the top. "So how's Mo feel about me helping you? At training the other day, he told me to watch my step with his girl. Actually, he said to watch my step with Mo McArnold's girl."

"Yeah, he likes to talk about himself in the third person."

"So? What's up? Is he upset I'm tutoring you? Upset I'm still living here?"

"Mo?" she laughed. "He was just joking with you. I don't think Mo sees you as competition."

Eric shifted in his seat. "Well, he shouldn't. I'm not trying to be. "

"Of course you're not. I just think Mo would be stupid jealous if it were any other guy tutoring me or living under my roof. He just knows you and I could never be anything but friends because you're not at all my type."

Eric looked across the table at her, his lips clenched into a tight line and his eyes darkening. She knew that look by now; it meant he was repressing anger or frustration. Why had her words bothered him so much? She wasn't trying to insult him. It wasn't like she was _his_ type either.

"Atari break!" she shouted to ease the tension. They kicked Shelley off the console, but even though Tami went so far as to crack out the paddles for Eric, his heart didn't seem to be in Kaboom the way it usually was.

Eric kept tutoring Tami, and the tension that had arisen between them that day dissipated. They settled back into a comfortable friendship.

 **[*]**

When school started, Tami joined the volleyball team. Now she would have two varsity sports on her college applications – softball and volleyball. Her mom made it to her first Thursday night game in September and congratulated her on her serve.

Meanwhile, Eric threw himself into football. Mo McArnold fulfilled his falling-star prediction. Mo shone a little too bright during the first game of the season and annoyed Coach Mackey by trying, against instructions, to pull a spectacular surprise move. The play cost the Bobcats their lead. Coach pulled Mo and put in Eric, who diligently but unspectacularly brought the team to victory. Eric did it again in the next game, while Mo glowered from the bench. The rest of the team started calling Eric "the tortoise" in a half affectionate, half mocking way, yelling in the halls, "slow and steady wins the race."

"I hate that nickname," Eric grumbled to Tami one morning over breakfast. He was eating Wheaties (Tami had grown bored of mocking him for that), and she was eating peanut butter on toast.

"No you don't," she insisted. "You love it. Even if it's a stupid, silly name, you still know it means you're finally getting some of the respect you deserve."

He let his spoon come to rest in the bowl. "You think I deserve respect?" he asked.

"Sure. Why not?"

"Mo's mad at me, though. Aren't you irritated I benched your boyfriend?"

"Coach benched him. Not you. And Mo will get it over it."

Eric picked up his spoon again and began poking it in and out of his Wheaties. "Well, he's got you to help him get over it, so I don't see how he can't."

 **[*]**

In October, Tami ended up scoring 50 points higher on the SAT than Eric did. One morning, while she helped him deliver papers (she felt she owed him at least one favor in return for the tutoring), she tried rubbing it in to rile him up. "And that was your _second_ time taking it, too," she said as she reached through the open window into the bed of the pickup for the next paper. "I only had to take it _once_ to beat you." She chucked the paper out the passenger's window.

He sped up towards the next house. "Just proves I'm an even better teacher than a student."

She smacked him playfully on the shoulder with the paper she'd just grabbed from the back.

"Hey," he said, laughing. "Use your strength for good and not for evil."

"I'm trying," she replied with a smile before vaulting the paper out the window. "I'm trying."

 **[*]**

One Monday night in November, on Eric's day to cook dinner, the entire Hayes household sat scrunched around the small, square, kitchen table chowing down on his chili.

Shelley grabbed the tabasco sauce and shook it violently over the bowl. "This should get an award for blandest chili ever," she said.

"Your mom doesn't like it too hot," Eric said. "But you can always add more spice. Oh, yeah, and _you_ can cook next Monday if you prefer."

Shelley clunked the tobacco sauce back onto the table. "I don't prefer."

"Eric's sweet to take my tastes into account," Mrs. Hayes said. "Eric, would you be willing to carve the turkey for Thanksgiving this Thursday?"

Eric was clearly surprised by the request. "Uh…well, ma'am, I'm going to be spending Thanksgiving with Nicole's family. You know, my girlfriend."

"Of course. Yes. Of course you would."

"I'll be sorry to miss out on Thanksgiving with you ladies," he said, "but Mr. Thomas especially invited me."

Eric liked Nicole's dad. He'd told Tami that even though Mr. Thomas was a little rigid about the once-a-week-only date thing, he was "a solid guy." He said Mr. Thomas had high expectations for his kids, but he was also affectionate. "He's really good at encouraging Nicole and her little brothers," he'd told Tami once. "I dunno…I just…I think that's the kind of father I want to be, if I ever have kids."

Tami sometimes wondered if Eric really loved Nicole, or if he just loved being a part of Nicole's family. He went to church with them every Sunday, ate Sunday supper with them, and now he was spending holidays with them. He spent more time with Nicole's family together than he did with Nicole alone.

Mrs. Hayes sighed. "I understand. It's just it would nice to have a man carve the turkey for a change."

"Eric's not a _**man**_ ," Shelley snorted.

"Shut up," Tami said. "He's already more a man than - " She was going to say than Dad was, because Dad had been a coward, not a man, but she stopped herself. It had been five years since he'd died, and yet her thoughts about her father still swung like a high-speed pendulum-from love to hate, from worship to disdain.

"Than _what?_ " Shelley asked.

"Never mind." Tami noticed Eric giving her an odd look, one she couldn't quite interpret.

 **[*]**

In December, for the first time in over sixteen years, the Bobcats made it to State. Mo played the first half, but Coach saved Eric for the second. Taylor threw the winning touchdown pass. When the clock ran out, Tami clomped down the bleachers and onto the field and ran with outstretched arms. It wasn't until Mo stepped right in front of Eric, hugged her, and yelled "Oh yeah! We're champions!" that she realized that, for some reason, Eric must have thought she was going for _him_. He was standing there with his arms half open, looking a little confused. Eric lowered them to his side and steadied himself on his feet as slap after slap on his shoulder titled him this way and that. Eventually, Nicole was there to hug him.

Just as Tami was slipping free of Mo's grip, she saw Mr. Taylor making his way down the sidelines. She'd noticed him in the bleachers earlier and wondered how often he still came to Eric's games. Eric caught sight of his father, let go of Nicole, and said, "I better get back to the locker room. Then we'll celebrate." He walked forward, head bent to the ground, at a steady clip. His father trailed behind him for a while, calling his name, but Eric walked faster. Eventually, Mr. Taylor gave up and veered off toward the parking lot.

After that big victory, Eric received a football scholarship offer from UT-Austin. Nicole promptly applied for early decision at the same school. Tami had no doubt that the straight-A, editor-of-the-yearbook, all-around American girl would be accepted. As for Tami, she hadn't decided where to apply yet. She'd get her applications out in the spring, by the late admission deadline, when her GPA was a little higher. Given her grades, she had to be realistic. Places like UT were off her list, but she was considering TMU, which (at the time) was a lower tier school with a mediocre football team, a place Mo would never consider attending, but, what could she do? Mo had stuck with her for over a year now. Maybe they'd manage to survive a long-distance relationship when they went away to different colleges.


	8. Chapter 8

Eric, not surprisingly, spent Christmas evening with Nicole's family. By eleven o'clock on Christmas night, Shelley was passed out in her bedroom in a drooling, sugar-induced coma. She'd gorged herself on candy and pie because she had resolved that, on New Year's Day, she was going on the Scarsdale Diet. Tami's mom had taken her Bible and wine to bed, and only Tami sat up in the living room, warm and comfortable in her pink sweats, staring blankly at the twinkling lights that adorned the artificial Christmas tree. Mom wouldn't waste money on a fresh one when you could use the same one every year.

She was thinking about heading to bed when the front door opened and closed. Tami nodded to Eric when he came into the living room. He grabbed a candy cane off the Christmas tree and settled into the arm chair and began picking lazily at the plastic wrapper.

"I got a present for you," Tami said. "It's under the tree."

Eric stopped picking at his candy cane. "I…I didn't get anything for you," he admitted.

"I'll take all your help with the SAT as my gift. Probably that one time delivering papers wasn't enough payback."

He slid out of the chair and crawled on his hands and knees towards the tree. He grabbed hold of the present, wrapped in silver and red. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he tore off the wrapping paper and pulled out the Texas Longhorns sweatshirt. "Uh…thanks," he said uncertainly.

Tami bristled. She'd put some real consideration into the gift. She thought Eric would like having something from the school he was no doubt planning to attend. "What, you don't like it?"

"No, I….it looks really warm." He slid it on over his dark red, button-down shirt, which he'd worn with a pair of khakis to Nicole's house. "Thanks." He crawled back to the arm chair, sat in it, and opened his candy cane. He began licking it along the red curves, as if he was trying to make the whole thing white.

"I thought, you know, since you're _going_ there."

He stopped licking and shrugged. "Maybe."

"Aren't you? They offered you a scholarship." UT wasn't the only school to do so, but it was the best. "Nicole's probably going."

"Doesn't mean I have to." He bit into the top of the cane.

"Don't you _want_ to go to the same school as your girlfriend?" Not to mention the football team.

He sighed. "I don't know if Nicole and I are going to work out."

Tami raised an eyebrow. "You've dated her since ninth grade."

"Yeah. I was thinking maybe, though…I should break up with her after graduation. Free her up to date other guys when she goes away to college."

Tami was mildly surprised, but she wasn't as shocked as most of their friends would be. Eric clearly cared for Nicole, but Tami had begun to suspect that, despite the freakishly long-term relationship, he wasn't exactly head-over-heels for her. Everyone else, however, assumed Eric and Nicole would get engaged this coming summer. "Eric, she's probably expecting a proposal after graduation, not a break up."

"Yeah," he muttered. "Yeah I know. Should I break up with her sooner, then, do you think? Not keep leading her on? But I don't want to ruin the rest of her senior year. There's prom and all that."

"Why do you want to break up with her, exactly?" Tami asked. "She's successful, responsible, sweet, pretty." Everything Tami wasn't. Tami wouldn't even give herself the "pretty" part, because no one ever called her that. They called her _hot_. _Sexy_. But not _pretty_.

"Yeah. She's great." Eric absently twirled the now pink-white candy cane. "But she doesn't thrill me."

"Thrill you?" Tami drew her feet up on the couch, wrapped her arms around her knees, and chuckled lightly. " _Thrill_ you?"

"Yeah," he said. "I want someone who thrills me." He put the unfinished candy cane on a crumb-filled, bright red paper plate that Shelley had left on the end table. "You know, someone who will challenge me. Someone who will talk back."

Tami studied an ornament at the bottom of the tree, one she herself had made as a 2nd grader. She'd constructed it from construction paper and glitter and proudly bestowed it on her father. He'd made such a show of it, too, and hung it right in the middle of the tree that year.

"Someone who's sexy but real," Eric continued, "direct but honest. Smart, but not just _book_ smart." His voice grew suddenly gentle. "You know anyone like that?"

As Tami stared at what little remained of the silver and gold sparkles on that childhood ornament, she tried to think of someone who could match Eric's description. The ringing of the phone startled her from her thoughts.

"Who the hell is calling at almost midnight?" she muttered as she walked toward the kitchen.

With the receiver to her ear, she heard a deep but strained voice say, "I need to speak to my son."

It had been three months since Mr. Taylor had last tried calling. "Let me check if he's available," she said and put the mouthpiece against her chest, although she didn't bother to check, because she knew Eric's answer by now. After waiting a moment, she put the receiver back to her ear. "Sorry, he's not avail – "

"- Tell him I'm in the hospital. Tell him I've had a heart attack. Tell him they're taking me into surgery, and I might not live."

[*]

Tami insisted on driving. Eric sat in the passenger seat of his own pick up, drumming his fingertips on the dash board, bouncing his leg up and down. She went way over the speed limit. "My dad's going to die," he said.

"You don't know that."

"He's going to die, and I haven't spoken to him for almost a year."

"He brought that on himself. Cheating on your mom when she was dying? And the way he's always criticized and found fault with you? You had every right to be angry. It's not _your_ fault for having been pissed off."

"When I was in elementary school, he used to cut out of work early every single Thursday to toss the ball with me. He took me to the college games, too. He used to bring my mom flowers every Tuesday. Every damn Tuesday." He stopped drumming on the dashboard. "What if I made a mistake hating him? What if it's too late? What if he dies and I never - " Eric choked on his words. He leaned his head against the window and wiped a hand across his eyes. Tami dropped one hand from the steering wheel, put it on his knee, and squeezed. He took her hand in his. "Merry fucking Christmas," he muttered.

By the time they got to the hospital, his father was already in surgery. All Eric could do was sit in the waiting room until it was over. Tami brought him coffee. He thanked her, but he didn't drink it. She sat beside him. She held his hand. She jerked it away when she saw Nicole and Nicole's mom and dad walk into the waiting room. Tami sat on the hand she'd been using to hold Eric's.

Mr. Thomas started talking immediately, saying they'd heard the news from one of the doctors who was a friend of Mrs. Thomas, and they were so sorry, so very sorry, and was there anything they could do? Eric stood and shook his head. Nicole had thrown her arms around him, but he pulled away and said, "Can I talk to you?" She seemed puzzled but let him lead her away from the chairs, to a far wall.

Nicole's parents looked at Tami quizzically as they sat down in two chairs beside her. "I'm Eric's housemate," she explained. "He rents from us."

Mrs. Thomas eyed her uncomfortably, but Mr. Thomas said, "Nice to meet you." In the distance, Eric leaned against the wall and talked softly to Nicole. After he'd been talking for a while, her chest heaved and tears streamed from her eyes. Eric put a hand on her arm, and she smacked it away.

"Wow, Nicole's really taking this hard," Mrs. Thomas said. "And it's not even you on that surgeon's table, Harold. She hasn't even been to Mr. Taylor's house since Eric moved out."

"I don't think that's what happening," Mr. Thomas said. He stood and strode toward Eric and Nicole, and Nicole lunged at her father and wept into his chest. His arms went around his little girl and he glared at Eric. Eric slunk off, and Mr. Thomas yelled for his wife to come on. The three disappeared from the waiting room, Nicole clinging to her dad.

Eric slunk down into the chair next to Tami. "I didn't think it was right," he said, "to let her stay here and wait with me and comfort me all night, when all along I know that eventually I'm just going to dump her. I just didn't think it was right."

"So you broke up with her? _Here_? _Now_?" Tami asked.

"I didn't know what the hell else to do. Was I jerk to do it now?"

"You're not a jerk," Tami assured him. "There's no easy way to do that. Your timing and presentation were totally odd, but…you're _not_ a jerk. That's _why_ it's going to be so hard for her, you know. Because you're not."

"Mr. Thomas is going to hate me now."

Tami smiled sympathetically.

"She was really crying," he said, squirming uneasily in his chair.

"Of course she was."

"Crap." He slapped his forehead. "I completely forgot it's Christmas. I was an asshole to do that on _Christmas_."

"It's not Christmas anymore," Tami said. "If that's any reassurance. It's after midnight. It's December 26."

"At least my dad won't die on Christmas."

Tami reached out and took his hand again, because she didn't know what she could say. That seemed to work, though, because he closed his eyes and squeezed her hand like it was a lifeline.

[*]

Mr. Taylor pulled through the surgery. He would go on to live another twenty-five years, though of course Tami didn't guess that at the time. She remained in the waiting room when Eric went to see him. He came out just fifteen minutes later, and she was afraid it hadn't gone well. He had his hands shoved in his coat pockets and his head bent to the floor, and she just got up and followed him back to the pick-up. She volunteered to drive again, and he let her.

The sun was beginning to rise as they drove, a pale red creeping up over the flat horizon. Eric lowered the visor and leaned his head back warily against the head rest. "I'm moving back in with my dad," he said. "I'll pack up my stuff tomorrow. I'll pay January rent anyway. I know your mom was counting on that money. But he's gonna need…he's gonna need some help for a while. You know. Recovery."

"Okay," she said softly. "So…you two are okay now?"

"Okay as we're ever going to be."

"Fifteen minutes, huh? That's all it took?"

"It doesn't take that long to say you're sorry."

Tami adjusted the vent so the heat wasn't blowing directly on her. "Did he say it too? Did _he_ say sorry?"

"Yeah. Yeah. He did." Eric slid his hands out of his coat pocket. "Second time in my life he's ever said that."

Tami drove the rest of the way back in silence. Eric went straight to his bedroom. She sat up on the couch, staring at the Christmas tree, thinking how strange, how different, it was going to be once Eric was gone from this house.


	9. Chapter 9

When Tami moved back into her old room, she pulled down the poster of Danny White Eric had left behind, along with the Cowboys star and a Bobcats pendant. She also found a polaroid shot of Eric and Nicole at junior prom in the front desk drawer (Tami hadn't moved the desk into Shelley's room – there was no room for it – so she'd let Eric use it). She began digging through the desk to see if he'd left anything else behind, and in the far back corner of the bottom desk drawer she found a completely unopened box of condoms.

She put them all in a small cardboard box along with the poster, picture, and pendant and brought them over to his house on a Monday evening, the night she knew for sure he didn't work at the gas station.

Mr. Taylor opened the door. Up close, he looked older than she had thought he was. His hair was almost completely gray, with flecks of black, instead of the other way around. He must be at least fifteen years older than her own mother. He was in a dressing gown of sorts, like maybe he'd been in it all day.

She introduced herself, and Mr. Taylor let her in, saying, "Eric's in the kitchen," before resuming his spot on the couch. The sound of the evening news faded as Tami made her way in the direction Mr. Taylor had indicated.

The house was much nicer than her own. The car in the driveway was nothing spectacular, but the furniture was stylish and art adorned the painted walls that, in Tami's house were coated with garish 70's wallpaper. They had curtains, too, which fell in billows and touched the floor. Eric's mom must have made the place a lovely home before she'd died.

When Tami entered the kitchen, Eric was doing the dinner dishes. That had been her job, after Monday dinner, when he cooked. But they wouldn't be sharing that meal anymore. She set the box down on the countertop. Eric shut off the water, turned, and opened the box. After glancing inside, he quickly shut the box again. His eyes were lowered to the countertop. "Sorry," he mumbled. "Thought I got everything."

Geez, it was just a box of condoms. It's not like Tami had never seen them before. No need to get so embarrassed. "It's okay."

He lifted his eyes, but he still didn't quite meet hers. "You could have called me to come get this stuff. You didn't have to bring it over."

"It's okay. You weren't in school all last week." It had been a short week, because of the New Year's holiday. "I brought your school work too." She slid off the backpack draped on her shoulder and pulled out several disorganized reams of paper.

He took them from her and lay them on the kitchen table, which was long and rectangular with dark, lined wood. Nothing like the card table the Hayes used, with its mismatched pliant wood chairs. She'd rather assumed the Taylors were poor, like her family, because Eric had worked hard to buy his own pick-up and much of his own clothes and didn't expect any help with college, but as she looked around the kitchen—almost twice the size of her own—she realized he was firmly lodged in the middle class. She supposed Mr. Taylor expected Eric to be independent just as much as he expected a high GPA and a winning football performance. It couldn't be easy, trying to satisfy all those expectations.

"Yeah. I've been…my dad's been…you know."

"Recovering."

"Yeah, but he's probably going back to work later this week."

There was a loud cough from the living room, and Eric went to the sink and started to fill a glass of water.

"I guess I should be going," Tami said.

"Probably," Eric agreed as he shut off the water. "Thanks for coming by."

 **[*]**

One afternoon in February, between fifth and sixth period, Eric leaned his shoulder against Tami's locker just after she closed it.

"Big Valentine's Day plans?" he asked.

"Nope," she said. "I've told Mo I'm done with Hallmark holidays. I'm not buying into them anymore. He should just get me flowers some random day of the week. So I'm just renting a movie and watching it with my mom."

He smirked. "A mommy daughter date?"

"Hey, nothing wrong with an eighteen year old girl going on a date with her mom." She;d turned eighteen recently and was pretty proud of the fact, so she kept slipping it into conversations. "How about you?" Tami zipped up the backpack that was resting on the floor. "Big plans?" She wondered what he was going to do without Nicole, if he was just going to pick up some "thrilling" chick or something, maybe one of the cheerleaders, and use that unopened box of condoms.

"Nah. I have to work."

She wrenched her backpack up from the ground and slung it onto her shoulder. "That kind of sucks."

"Why? You apparently think it's a stupid holiday."

She shrugged. "Still, for you, it's a good chance to get laid, right?"

He looked down at the floor. She never got tired of teasing him that way. Most of the football players puffed and postured when anyone talked about sex, making it clear they had an impressive record. But Eric was very private and modest about that sort of thing. She found it amusing and a little endearing.

"Did uh…" he said, putting his hands on his hips and raising his eyes without quite raising his head, "…you see Mo talking with Mary Beth after lunch today?"

"Trying to change the subject?"

He lifted his head all the way up now. "No. I just wondered if you'd _seen_ them. _Talking_."

"Yeah? So?" Mary Beth was one of the cheerleaders. She and Mo had a couple of classes together.

Eric's shoulders rose in a languid shrug. "Okay. If it doesn't bother you."

"If _what_ doesn't bother me?"

"Nothing, you know, it's just if I - "

"Tortoise!" came Mo's voice as his hand clamped down on Eric's shoulder. "What are you doing flirting with Mo McArnold's girl?"

"I…I…I wasn't. We were just – "

"Ha, man! Come on! I know you weren't," Mo said, punching him playfully in the shoulder. "I was just giving you a hard time." He put his arm out, bent, so Tami could slide hers through his, which she did. Eric moved out of their way as Mo began walking Tami to class.

[*]

In March, Tami asked the guidance counselor for a recommendation for the application she was preparing for TMU. "Based on _your_ grades?" the woman asked with a sneer.

Tami knew it was a bit of a long shot, but she didn't think she was aiming for the stars either. Sure TMU wasn't bottom tier, but it wasn't like it was UT either.

"The average GPA of entering freshman at TMU is 3.1. As of right now, you only have a 2.56.

"But, my S.A.T. scores, and you've seen how much improvement – "

"- I need to dedicate my time to better prospects, Tami. Besides, you've been suspended for selling cigarettes on campus." That had happened her second time through her sophomore year. "I'd have to mention that, you know."

Tami stormed out of the office and went straight for the courtyard. There was only one minute left in the fifteen minute break, the break that the school was discussing taking away next year as part of its plan to add a seventh period to the school day (they were also going to shorten lunch and the time between classes for the poor suckers who would still be trapped here). By instinct, she dug in her backpack for her cigarettes. She hadn't smoked for over two months. When she remembered she'd quit and that the cigarettes wouldn't be there, she chucked her backpack against a tree and let out a long "UGGGGGH!"

"I don't think that tree's a soft target. Want to try me instead?"

She turned and her groan became a half laugh in the light of Eric's smiling face.

"What's up?" he asked.

They ended up skipping their next period and sitting under the tree after the bell rang while she told him about the counselor. " _I'll_ write you a recommendation," he said, and she laughed and shook her head.

"Have you asked your volleyball coach or your softball coach? I'm sure either of them would."

"Yeah, but I still need one more." They brainstormed the possibilities until she had a list of three teachers to ask.

"So I finally confronted my dad," Eric said, "about the affair."

Tami's eyes widened in surprise. "And? How did that go? Do you feel better now?"

"It didn't go well. And no, I don't feel better." He swept his hand over the light brown dirt and grabbed a leaf. "First he denied it, and when I told him I'd seen them together, going into that hotel…" Eric shrugged. "He said I couldn't possibly know what it was like to have a wife who'd been sick on and off for two years and to not be able to…you know. He said he loved my mom, and he took care of her to the end, but he needed comfort, too. Said he felt like an ass for doing it, but he couldn't stop himself from doing it and all this other bullshit." He ripped the leaf down the stem. "And I got so damn mad, that I jumped in my tuck and just started driving. Just driving as fast as I could down the highway. I ran out of gas. I called Mo and he came and topped me off."

"Mo can be sweet like that," Tami said.

"Yeah," Eric said, "Golden Mo!"

Tami thought the tone in his voice bordered on the bitter, but she didn't understand why. She'd always had the sense that Mo irritated Eric, but they _were_ friends. They hung out sometimes. They were on the same team.

Eric picked up another leaf and began tearing it apart in thin strips. "Were you and Mo hanging out last night when I called and asked for his help?" he asked.

"No. I was out with the softball team. It was a girls _only_ thing. No boyfriends permitted." They were celebrating their victory. Now that it was her second season playing softball, Tami had _finally_ been accepted by the team she had led to victory four times last season and, so far, two times this season. She'd pretended not to want their approval last year, but when they'd all cheered her last night at the local pizza place and toasted their Diet Cokes in her direction, she'd felt happier than she had in a long while.

"That's what I thought, but I thought I heard you in the background." He ran his hand over the earth until he'd found a third leaf to shred. "But now that I think about it…I guess it sounded more like Mary Beth." He stood up and grabbed his backpack. "We're gonna be late for class."

Eric's mention of Mary Beth haunted the back of Tami's mind, but when she asked Mo about her, he just said, "Oh, yeah, she was at my house because we're doing this group project for Government class." Mo had always been a decent enough boyfriend, so Tami let the subject drop.

 **[*]**

In April, Eric asked if he could move back in with the Hayes family. His father's recovery had gone well, the man wasn't having any major problems, and Eric's anger towards him, which he'd put aside for a time, had clawed its way back up. But Mrs. Hayes said no, she couldn't have an in-and-out border, she didn't really need the money that badly anymore, and, besides, Eric ought to learn to live with his father. "Because," Mrs. Hayes said, "at the end of the day…he'll always be your father."

"Pearls of wisdom from a woman who never respected her own husband," Tami said a few minutes later when they were sitting on the tail of Eric's pick-up, which was parked on the pebble driveway in front of the Hayes house.

"Never?"

"Well…I don't know. I guess they used to be in love. They didn't really start fighting until I was in fifth grade."

"Yeah," Eric said. "I used to think my parents were in love too. But I guess they weren't. Or maybe they were, but, I just…I don't know. I would _never_ cheat on my wife. And I would make it work. If it were me. I would always try to make it work. If I ever get married, I'm in it for thick or thin—the whole damn way."

"Things are always easy in the hypothetical," Tami said.

"What's that mean?" He slid off the tail gate and turned to face her.

"Nothing, just…real life is messy, is all. People break up. Even married people. But I agree. Married people should try really hard to make it work." She shrugged and slid off the tail gate herself. "But if Mo and I ever get married, I'll be realistic about my expectations. I'll have my lines, you know, thou-shalt-not-cross, but I'm not going to be one of these wives who gets upset at every little thing."

He raised the tailgate and slammed it closed. "You actually think you'll marry Mo?"

"Why not?"

He fished his keys out of his pocket. "I need to get to work. Sorry I'm going to miss your game tonight. Not that you need me there. I mean, you'll have Mo there."

She put her hand in the back pockets of her jeans and smiled. "It's good to have a friend, too, though, you know. Your boyfriend kind of _has_ to be there. Your friends don't. I like it when you come."

He looked down at the ground and pushed the gravel around with his sneaker. His jaw was set kind of tight, the way it was when he was irritated and trying not to say something, but she had only complimented him. She didn't understand how she'd irritated him, but she knew enough to know from that expression that he was determined not to unlock the hinges of his mouth, so she just said goodbye and headed inside.


	10. Chapter 10

In early May, Tami came home from school one day and pulled the mail from the battered, gray mailbox. When she saw the letter from TMU, she dropped the rest of the mail on the dusty ground and tore it open. She read it twice to make sure they'd really accepted her.

Tami's own story was one of the many that would one day inspire her to be a different kind of Dean of Admissions. She'd gotten lucky; someone in that admissions office had seen the change in her, the potential for future performance, and had taken a chance on her.

After she'd dropped her stuff inside the house, she drove straight to the gas station to tell Eric. The used car she'd bought last week with her waitressing money hitched and sputtered sometimes, and she had to press the brakes extra hard to make sure the car stopped where she wanted it to, but it got her from point A to point B.

When she arrived at the gas station, Eric was checking some woman's oil, so Tami nodded at him and then waited for him in the quickie mart.

"What's up?" he asked when he entered the shop. The first two buttons of his gray uniform shirt were unbuttoned over his white undershirt. Red cursive letters spelled out Eric on a white label just above his breast.

She held up the letter. "I got into TMU."

He smiled broadly and hugged her. When he drew away, he said, "Hey! Amazing coincidence. That's where I'm going!"

Her smile wavered. "What? But you got an offer from UT."

He shrugged. "Yeah, but TMU offered me a better one. UT only gave me 50%. TMU is offering a full-ride."

"But TMU's team sucks."

"Why be a small fish in a big pond when I can be a big fish in a small pond? Better chance of getting playtime and making an impression on a lesser team. Better chance of getting noticed by the NFL."

Tami didn't think that was how that worked, but Eric should know more about the recruitment process than she did. "Well…uh….I better go tell Mo."

"You haven't told him yet?" Surprise passed through Eric's eyes first, and then something like delight. "You told _me_ first?"

"Just because…yeah….I mean….I'm going to tell him right now."

She drove straight to Mo's house and found Mary Beth walking out the door. "What the hell was she doing here?" she asked when Mary Beth had driven off.

"Hey, baby doll," Mo said, and kissed her quickly on the lips. "How are you doing?" He opened the front door wide.

Tami strutted in and whirled. "I said, what the hell was she doing here?"

"We were planning," he said. "You know….for the spring fundraiser booster thing."

"What fundraiser?"

"The _fundraiser_ , Tami. What is this? The Spanish Inquisition? Do you want me to ask _you_ what _you_ were doing hanging out with Eric when I came into the diner Saturday morning?"

"I was on my break. And he stopped in for coffee. And we talked. Because we're _friends_." She shook her head.

"Yeah, like me and Mary Beth." He pointed to the letter. "What's that?"

She decided to let the argument go for the moment. She didn't feel like fighting. She'd just gotten into college! And a four-year college too. She held up the TMU letter. "They accepted me!" She did a little jump.

"Wow," he said. "Does this mean I don't get to see you strip after all?"

She couldn't believe she had ever entertained such a possibility. She felt like a different person than the one who had said she planned to do that, but not _terribly_ different, because even while she had said it, part of her knew she didn't mean it, that she was only pretending, lashing out, crying out for someone to tell her she was worth more than that. And someone had. Eric.

"I'm kidding, baby doll!" Mo exclaimed in response to her sour expression. "Congratulations! I'm proud of you." He bent down and kissed her. He pulled his lips away a little and jerked his head in the general direction of his bedroom. "Parents are out," he said.

She sighed. She didn't want to believe he was cheating. If he was, would he really suggest sex immediately after Mary Beth left? By now Tami had given Mo over twenty months of her life. She loved him, at least as much as she knew how to love at this point. He'd stuck with her longer than any other guy had. He'd said he loved her, more than once. He'd been the first and only guy _ever_ to say those words to her, other than her dad.

She stepped further inside. Mo grinned and shut the door.

 **[*]**

On the drive home from Mo's, Tami thought about how horribly wrong the sex had felt.

As she showered, she thought of the hints Eric had dropped, more than once, about Mary Beth.

As she brushed her teeth, she thought about how much she'd grown this past year.

In bed at night, she thought about the fact that she'd earned her way into college.

At breakfast the next morning, she thought about how Eric had believed in her even when no one else had.

On the drive to school, she thought about how Eric was actually a lot better looking than Mo, if you didn't count the last two pimples he hadn't quite shed.

All through first period, she thought how Eric really wasn't as boring and she'd initially assumed him to be, how he could be truly funny sometimes, even if it was a sort of gentle, goofy funny, and how he must have the capacity for passion, because she'd seen his passion for football.

All through second period, she began to put together the pieces of the puzzle as she thought about the strange way Eric had sometimes acted toward her in the recent months.

And all through third period, she thought about how she shouldn't need a father to tell her she deserved better than Mo.

Ten minutes into her lunch period, Tami strode into the cafeteria and found the football players seated at their usual table eating their usual food in their usual places, Eric straight across from Mo.

Mo raised his head in a half nod to her as she neared the table and began to push out his chair, as if he expected she was coming to sit on his lap, but instead she walked right past him to the other side of the table, leaned down, and planted one straight on Eric Taylor's lips.

She left Eric sitting there with a befuddled, half-smiling look on his face.

[*]

The heels of Tami's cowboy boots clicked decisively against the marble floor, but her steps slowed when she reached the hall lockers. Eric's mouth had been soft and warm, but there hadn't been anything exciting about the kiss.

She wondered if she'd made a horrible mistake.

She was a few feet down the first row of lockers when Eric caught up with her. He grabbed her from behind and pulled her back against himself, his breath hot on her neck. He whirled her around, backed her against a locker, and kissed her passionately. It didn't feel anything like the kiss in the cafeteria. She was glad he was holding her against the locker, because she wasn't sure her own legs could hold her.

Eric broke from her lips only long enough to mutter, "It's about damn time." They continued kissing. Someone passing by shouted, "Get a room!" and, a second later, Eric's warm, hungry lips were ripped off of hers.

Mo had him by the collar of his shirt. He shoved Eric's face straight into the locker next to Tami. The metallic thud was so hard that Tami let out an instinctive scream. Eric was too dazed to start fighting back, and so his face came away from the locker and then right back against it. When Mo pulled him out to have a third go, he was stopped by the assistant principal.

When the assistant principal let go of Mo's collar and ordered him to settle down, Mo turned to Tami. "Eric told you about Mary Beth, didin't he?"

"No, actually _you_ just told me. Just _now_. That confession just came out of _your_ mouth."

Mo snarled. "Way to go, Columbo."

"In my office, gentlemen. Now!"

Eric straightened his shirt and glanced at Tami, who winced on his behalf before he followed the assistant principal down the hall.


	11. Chapter 11

"At least I didn't get suspended," Eric muttered as Tami gently touched the black half circle around his left eye, from where he'd hit the combination lock. They were leaning against his pick-up after fifth period, because this was when he took off for work. He'd gotten a "vocational period" for the last part of the day, which allowed him to leave school early to go to his job. Tami would have done the same thing, except she felt the need to pack as many academics into her last year as she could, since she'd been taking the easy road for too long.

"Suspended for what?" she asked. "Mo's the one who should have gotten suspended." Not that he had. It was less than a month to graduation. The principal hadn't wanted to jeopardize Mo's scholarship, which had a "character clause."

Eric sighed. "And now Nicole thinks I cheated on her with you back when she and I were dating."

"I know. I heard about that."

After Mo and Eric had been released from the principal's office, a few minutes into fourth period, Nicole had cornered Eric against the wall outside his Trigonometry class. She asked how long he'd been cheating with Tami, if it was from the day he first moved in with the Hayes. No amount of assurance from Eric that he had _never_ cheated on her at _any time_ would temper her tears. Finally, Joe Manning, who was the class valedictorian (having beaten out Nicole by .005 G.P.A. points), as well as editor of the school newspaper, put a hand on Nicole's shoulder, gently urged her away, and talked to her softly as he led her down the hall, saying, "Forget that jerk."

Tami could tell Eric felt like an asshole. "If it's any consolation, Joe asked her to the prom, and she said yes, so I think maybe she's going to be able to get over you."

Prom was this coming Friday, but Tami still hadn't bought her dress. She got paid on Wednesday, and she was planning to go shopping as soon as she cashed her check. She'd been expecting to go with Mo, of course, but she supposed he'd take Mary Beth now. Make it public. There was no reason to sneak around anymore.

"Speaking of that," Eric stood straight and then made a playful, dramatic bow, "my lady," she giggled when he said _lady_ , "may I have the honor of escorting you to our senior prom?"

"No."

"Uh…" Eric swallowed. "I'm kind of getting mixed signals here."

"Didn't you tell me last week you were working prom night because you'd get double pay?" Ernie, the gas station owner, hadn't been able to find anyone else who was willing to work, and it was his anniversary with his wife, so he didn't want to work either.

"Yeah…but….I mean…that was before you and I…I mean….we're a thing now, right? Or, at least, we're _going_ to be. Right?"

She laughed. "God, you're cute." She put a hand on the back of his head and toyed with his hair. He apparently hadn't been to the barber in a while. He'd been working long hours lately because he wanted a new (well, new _er_ ) truck before he went away to college, and his hair had gotten a bit long in the back. The thick locks curled up on his neck. "Prom's this huge production," she said, "and it's so expensive, and it's totally overrated. I don't want to go to prom with you. Just take me out on a _normal_ date Saturday. I can use the money I would have spent on a dress for college, you can use the money you would have spent to rent a tux for your new pick-up, and we can go out to eat when the entire senior class isn't also there."

"You sure that's what you want?"

She nodded. "I don't really want to see Mo, and I don't think you want Nicole watching us either. Am I right?"

He nodded. "Yeah. I just…don't want you to miss prom. That's a big deal for girls, right?"

"Do I strike you as a conventional sort of girl?"

He smiled lightly and put a hand on each of her hips. "You're more conventional than you think." He bent to kiss her. "But I'll take you at your word, and we'll skip prom Friday, and do dinner Saturday night instead. Is it a date?"

"It's a date."

 **[*]**

Later that evening, Tami told her mom about the acceptance letter. She hadn't been able to the night before, because she'd been too preoccupied with the other thoughts that had been swamping her mind. Tami was at the kitchen table when she shared the news, and Mom was standing at the counter with her wine. Shelley was playing Atari in the living room. Apparently it was practice for the arcade, which she'd taken to hanging out in after school to "meet cute boys." It was two miles from her middle school, and she could ride her bike there. Tami advised her little sister that the arcade was not the best locale to meet Prince Charming, but Shelley had just rolled her eyes.

Mom's glass hit the counter with a half thud, half clink. You couldn't really clink on that cheap formica.

"I got into TMU," Tami repeated. "They accepted me."

Mom actually squealed. She jumped a little and clapped her hands. "I thought maybe if you were lucky, two year's at community college….I never thought…."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mom."

"Shush it, Tami. That's not what I meant. I meant I'm proud of you."

"Then you could just say that."

Mom came and hugged her from behind. "I'm proud of you." Then she sat down across from Tami at the table. That's when she told her about the secret college fund, the $3,000 she'd stashed away, which included, among other things, all the rent Eric had paid her that year he stayed with them. It would be enough for tuition and fees for an entire semester at TMU. Tami would have a head start—only three and a half years' worth of loans.

[*]

On prom night, Tami drove to the gas station and hung out with Eric at work. They ate nasty quickie mart nachos and drank 20-ounce sodas and passed judgment on the dresses of the girls whose boyfriends stopped in for gas. They joked and laughed and talked and kissed between customers.

As Eric leaned with his elbows by the register and looked at Tami, who was perched sitting on the counter, he said, "You don't regret not going?"

"You know what? I think I've had more fun tonight here with you than I did at junior prom and all my homecoming dances combined."

He smiled. "Yeah. Yeah. Me too."

"Although, it might have been nice to dance with you."

He pulled himself into a standing position and turned up the radio that sat on the sill against a frosted window. He walked around the counter and held out a hand to her. "May I?"

Smiling, she slid off the counter. "You may."

It felt good to be in his arms, as if she melded naturally to them. "You're a surprisingly good dancer," she said.

"Nicole made me take classes before junior prom."

She pulled away to look at him. "Seriously?" When he nodded, she said, "That girl is way too high achieving."

"She's…she's a'ight, Nicole. She didn't deserve for me to hurt her the way I did."

"Well, I think Joe is helping her to heal."

Before prom, Joe and Nicole had stopped by for gas. Nicole had made a point of publically making out with Joe in front of Eric, and Joe seemed content to play along. Tami thought Joe was actually a better match for Nicole, and even if Nicole was using him for the moment, they might eventually transition into a real relationship.

Tami sighed. "Mo's going to prom with Mary Beth."

"I tried to tell you about that."

Tami leaned against his chest and swayed to the music with him. "Not for any ulterior motive though, right?"

"Me? I never have ulterior motives. I'm as pure as the driven snow."

She laughed into the lapel of his uniform. He smelled like oil and slim jims and stale cigarettes. He danced her around a piece of gum that seemed to have become permanently adhered to the floor. Outside, a car horn honked impatiently for service.

"Best prom ever," she said - and meant it.

[*]

Eric showed up at Tami's door the next evening with flowers—not for her, but for her mother. "You catch more flies with honey than vinegar," he explained to Tami as he opened the door of his pick-up for her.

"Mom's not a fly, she's a fly trap."

The truth was, Mom had agreed to the date. She'd even seemed happy about it. Mrs. Hayes much preferred Eric to Mo and had developed a trust in him because of the year he'd spent living in the Hayes household without once crossing her lines. "He's a good young man," Mom had told her before the date. "A fine boy. Don't tempt him. If you so much as touch him inappropriately, you know - "

"- Yeah. I know. I'll be in the sixth circle of hell with Hitler."

"Hell doesn't have circles, Tami."

"Well I guess I'll find out when I go there."

"Don't be smart with me," Mom snapped.

"I thought you wanted me to be smart. I thought you were proud of me for proving I can be smart and getting into college."

Mom sighed. "Can we just stop this right here? Besides, I think that's your date pulling up in the driveway."

Tami's first official date with Eric progressed in a predictable manner: a nice dinner and comfortable conversation followed by a movie of Tami's choice and then some stolen kisses in the parking lot before Eric reluctantly pulled away and started the truck to guarantee he had Tami home at the designated time. He made sure he was seen walking her to the door and leaving her with no more than a kiss on the cheek. (Mrs. Hayes needn't know about the tangled tongues in the parking lot.)

That was the night Tami learned that predictable wasn't quite the same thing as boring and that tameness could be unexpectedly titillating. Eric had left her wanting more.


	12. Chapter 12

On the last day of school, neither Eric nor Tami had to work. That afternoon, they found themselves alone in Eric's house. They'd started with cuddling and watching TV, but they soon progressed to kissing. Eric's hands found their way beneath her shirt, where he stroked and caressed with a feathery touch that made her both strain and sigh. She tasted his tongue, still slightly salty from the chips he had been eating earlier, and moaned. He slid one hand down and began to work loose the button at the top of her jeans, but she stopped him by placing a staying hand over his.

"What's wrong?" he asked. "Don't you want to?"

Tami had once thought that having sex was like letting a genie out of the bottle. Once you'd done it, there was no going back. You just had to _keep_ doing it, with the next guy you went out with and the next. That hadn't worked for her. It had left her feeling used. "I'm not ready."

She braced herself for his complaint, for the pressure that usually followed a refusal, but he only said, with mingled confusion and disappointment, "Okay."

The disappointment she saw in his face was not the same as the irritation she'd seen in Mo's when she tried to put him off before too quickly giving in. She'd given in to other boys, too, the summer before she started dating Mo, because she didn't know how else to fill the raw void her father had left in her heart. At the time, she'd told herself she didn't care, that sex was just one body part going into another body part. That was all. Except, if that really _was_ all, why had she so often felt even more hollow afterwards than before?

"I think maybe..." She struggled to explain herself, to make him understand that it had nothing to do with her attraction to him. "I just want to do things differently this time. I _really_ like you. I don't want to screw this up. And the way I've done things in the past…it hasn't worked." She looked into his still disappointed eyes. " _You're_ the one who told me I should stop trying to be the bad girl, right? Remember?"

"Yeah, but…you can always be bad with _me_. I mean…I'm safe. Tami, I won't hurt you. And it's not just…it doesn't just not mean anything with me." He winced at his own inability to articulate his thoughts.

She put a hand on his knee. "This is just something I need to do. For me. For my own self-respect."

"Tami, I respect – "

" – I _know_ you respect me. It's just something _I_ need to do. I'm trying to do things right for a change. I don't want to have sex just because I've done it before. Do you understand?"

"Maybe. Sort of."

"Eric, I'm sorry – "

"- Don't apologize," he interrupted her. "You don't have anything to apologize for."

"So you can be patient with me? You don't mind? I know it's a lot to ask."

" _Can_ I be patient? What do you think I've been? Ever since I broke up with Nicole - who did you think I was waiting _for_?" He put a hand softly on her cheek and stroked it with his thumb. "And it's _not_ a lot to ask, Tami. Hell, we're in high school. And we've only been dating a few weeks." He leaned in, kissed her lips tenderly, and whispered, "I'll wait as long as you need me to."

She felt the relief wash over her, like a gentle wave that buoyed her up and made her lighter than she ever imagined she could be.

[*]

The next day, during their lunch breaks from work, Eric brought Tami a hamburger from Whattaburger. He must have known she was tired of the diner's food. Whoever wanted to eat where they worked? They sat on the tailgate of his pick-up in the far back corner of the parking lot, by the blue dumpster, and ate and talked. Tami slid a pickle from out of her burger and handed it to Eric, who liked extras. "Can I ask you something personal?"

"Um…I guess." He inserted the pickle between the bun and patty of his own burger and bit in.

"Did you and Nicole ever go all the way?"

He swallowed and his jaw tightened. "I'm not totally inexperienced if that's what you think. I can do whatever you want. Even if I haven't done it before, I'm sure I can do a decent job of – "

She laughed. "- That's _not_ why I asked. I'm sure you'd be…good at all that." My God, was she blushing? Was Tami Hayes _blushing_? "So you didn't do it, then? Even though you dated for like four years?"

He looked down at his half-eaten burger. "She said she wanted to save that for marriage. We did _some_ stuff, but…" He shrugged. "She wanted to save it for marriage. That's her values. And I respect that. That's what my mom and dad taught me too." A puff of air escaped him. "Not that my dad has any credibility when it comes to that sort of thing anymore." He had another bite of his burger.

So that's why the box of condoms had been unopened. Except, that didn't quite make sense either. "Wait. If Nicole wanted to save sex for marriage, then why did you have that box of condoms in my drawer?"

"Nicole changed her mind about a week before Christmas." He licked the mustard off his fingers. "She told me that she didn't want to keep waiting, but she also wanted to make it special." He balled up the wrapper from his burger. "So a friend of hers was going to hook us up with this hotel room in Big Spring and we were gonna…you know…ring in the New Year. She thought it would be symbolic. New year, new experience, you know."

"You broke up _after_ she said she would have sex with you but _before_ it could happen?"

"I bought the condoms a couple days before Christmas. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it wasn't fair to her. Because _I_ knew we weren't going to end up married. I didn't want to hurt her even more than I was already going to hurt her. Nicole's…great. I guess I loved her, but I just didn't…I don't know… _ **love**_ her."

"You were playing a role," Tami said. He'd been the perfect boy, after all, polite and deferential, studious, athletic, respectful to his elders and to girls, so why shouldn't he date and marry the perfect girl?

Eric looked at her and blinked. "I guess. I guess I kind of was. Anyway…I wanted to. I mean, I'd wanted to do it with her for a long, long time. But I didn't think it was right to take her virginity, which I knew meant so much to her, when I _knew_ we weren't going to end up married."

"So that was one of the reasons you broke up with her when you did?"

He nodded. "That and I just…I didn't want her there in the hospital. I didn't want to pretend with her. I thought my dad was dying, and I didn't want to pretend that I didn't already have these doubts about our relationship and…I just wanted to be with someone I didn't have to pretend with. I just wanted to be with you."

She touched his cheek lightly, turned his face towards herself, and kissed him. They kissed for a long time, and when she pulled away, she put her hands down on the tailgate and began kicking her legs happily back and forth where they dangled over it.

"You understand why I didn't do it with Nicole right?" Eric asked. "I mean, you understand it wasn't because _I'm_ opposed to sex before marriage. Because I don't have any qualms about that. Just so you know."

"So what you're saying is that you're available?"

"Anytime."

She chuckled and leaned towards him, bumping his shoulder with her own, and a smile spread across his face, the smile she'd grown to love, even before they were dating. She'd loved it because he only smiled like that for her. She'd loved it because, even though she didn't know it at the time, the very smile itself said, _I love you._

All those puzzle pieces had come together and gained full definition by now - the things he'd said before he broke up with Nicole, the things he'd said in the months that followed, the things he'd said about what he wanted in a girl…the things he'd said about _her_ , even when she hadn't known it.

"I love you, too," she said.

He raised an eyebrow. "I didn't say anything."

"Yeah. Yeah, you did."

 **[*]**

Two days later, Tami realized she was late. Not for her job. Not for a date. Not for an appointment. _Late._

She'd tried birth control pills for a while, but she hadn't liked the side effects, so she'd gone off them. She and Mo always used condoms anyway, she figured, so why bother?

But that very last time she'd had sex with Mo, the time she was trying to forget, the time it had felt so wrong - the condom had slipped. It hadn't freaked her out at the time. It didn't seem like that big a deal; just a _little_ slip, just _one_ time …what were the chances, really? And then she'd been distracted by the no-longer-deniable realization that Mo was cheating and by her new relationship with Eric.

Tami bought a home pregnancy test on her lunch break and buried it in her purse before returning to the diner where she was waitressing full-time for the summer. She called Eric and canceled their plans for the evening, telling him she was too tired to go out.

Later that night, she waited until she was sure Shelley and her mother were asleep to ensconce herself in the bathroom. When the test came back positive, she slid down onto the floor, leaned back against the bathtub, and cried.

After forcing herself into a thin calmness, she wrapped the test repeatedly in toilet paper and buried it at the bottom of the trash can. She slipped out of the bathroom and into her bed, where she lay in darkness wondering if she should tell Mo first or Eric. For a fleeting moment, she considered having sex with Eric, waiting a week or two to tell him about the pregnancy, and then letting him assume the baby was his.

He would help her. He would feel obligated; his sense of duty would kick in and, one way or the other, he would help her. But if she admitted the baby was Mo's…just a few weeks into their relationship…she didn't know what affect that would have. It was tempting, so tempting, to lie by omission. It was also wrong. In the end, she decided she would tell Eric first, but she would tell him the truth. She would wait to tell Mo until she had decided what to do about the baby.

She broke the news late one night at the gas station where Eric was working alone. They sat there on the bench outside the quickie mart, inhaling the stench of gasoline. Tami so desperately wanted a smoke, but she'd quit, and she was pregnant anyway. Eric was silent the entire time she talked. When she stopped, he didn't say a word for what felt like five minutes. Finally, he asked, "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. I've thought about an abortion, but…I just don't think I can do it. I don't know if it's all that hell fire stuff my mom tried to put in me or what, but…me…I just can't. So I guess I'll defer college by one year? Put it up for adoption maybe?"

He didn't reply. He sat there, frozen like a statue, one hand on each of his legs, just above his knees, staring at the sign that read $1.05 / gallon.

They were finished, she was sure. They had been too different from the start. It had never been destined to work.

Tami stood up, walked rapidly to her car, and drove off.


	13. Chapter 13

Tami was on her fifteen-minute break, sitting bent over a paperback in a booth in the far corner of the diner, trying not to think about the pregnancy. She'd made an appointment with the obstetrician for the end of the week. That was as far as she'd gotten in dealing with it. She hadn't told Mo. Not yet. She didn't know how he would react. She didn't even want him involved. Still, he deserved to know. She'd have to tell him eventually.

Eric slid into the seat across from her. She didn't notice he was there until he took the book from her hands, closed it, set it on top of the napkin dispenser, and asked, "Have you told Mo?"

"Not yet. I – "

"- Good." He put his hands flat down on the table and looked her straight in the eyes. "Here's what's going to happen."

"Eric, I - "

"- This baby is mine."

"You know that's not possible," she said. "We haven't even - "

"- Listen to me," he insisted. "You know Mo's not going to step up. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to elope this summer, before we go to college. TMU is giving me housing, too, not just tuition. If we're married before we start school, I can get us family housing. Family housing goes all the way through the summer. We won't have to pay rent the whole time we're in college. I can get more hours this summer at the gas station before we head off to college. I'll work two shifts. I'll work while we're at college too – I'll find another gas station or a lawn service or something. I'll find a way between football and school – I'll find a way to support you and the baby. And that's what's going to happen."

Tami nodded dully. She wanted to say no, that she couldn't ask that of him, that they hadn't dated long enough, that it was a bad idea, that he was under no obligation to her.

But instead she just grabbed the lifeline he had thrown her.

 **[*]**

Tami had always hated going to the GYN. She'd made her first appointment in secret, the last month of her sophomore year, – because she was getting pressure from her then boyfriend, and she wanted to get on the pill. The guy had dumped her not long after they had sex. After that, she'd told herself she didn't need a relationship, that she was just having fun, that sex hadn't – and didn't – mean anything to her.

Today, she felt more awkward than usual. She was glad when the whole mortifying experience was over and the door shut, for the final time, behind her. She shred herself of the flimsy paper robe, which seemed specifically designed to intensify the discomfort of the whole experience. After throwing on her clothes, she walked across the hall to the doctor's office and sat down in the big chair across from her desk.

Dr. Erickson was scribbling on her chart. She closed the folder and looked up. "You took an E.P.T.?"

Tami nodded.

"Hmmmm…." She opened the folder again and looked at a paper. "And it was positive?"

Tami nodded.

"You just took the one?"

Of course she'd just taken the one. Those things cost a bundle. She nodded again. She looked at the framed picture on the wall behind the doctor, of three cuddly babies, all dressed in pink. Were she and Eric really going to do this? Raise a child together? While he worked and went to school and played football, and she tried to wend her slow way through college? Would she grow to resent him, the way her mother had grown to resent her father? Still worse, would Eric grow to resent _her_?

"Well…these home tests have been on the market for less than ten years. They haven't really been refined yet. So you get a number of false negatives. But false positives are very uncommon."

"I know." Those babies were plump, and smiling, and happy. Always the babies in the pictures. Never the parents. What did their faces look like, Tami wondered, after hours of not sleeping, after the fights caused by the irritability, after the vanished dreams?

"But apparently you got one of those rare false positives. You aren't pregnant."

Not pregnant?

 _Not pregnant._

 _Not pregnant._

The relief rose through her like a flame.

Then a wave of insecurity doused the relief. Eric had proposed to her. She'd said yes. He'd proposed to her when he thought she was pregnant with another guy's baby. He'd promised to stand by her, see her through, be her husband, and work hard for her and the baby that wasn't even his. To raise it as his own.

She didn't deserve him.

She wasn't better than her past, better than her mother, better than all her mistakes. Eric would realize that soon enough.

Tami made her way home numbly. She called Eric at the gas station. She told him she wasn't pregnant, and then she told him they were over.

He was still asking, "Why? What did I do? I didn't do anything! Why, Tam -" when she hung up the phone.

 **[*]**

Eric called the day after she broke up with him, in the early morning, before Shelley had to be at summer cheerleading camp and Tami had to be at work. He called the second and the third day too. Tami made Shelley answer the phone every time and say she wasn't home.

"What's up with you and the dweeb anyway?" Shelley asked when she put down the phone that third day. "You aren't down with him anymore?"

"Shell, could you talk like a normal person for just one day? This phase has lasted well over a year now."

"You know, I think I was way harsh calling Eric a hoser before. Maybe _you're_ the hoser."

"What's a hoser?" Tami asked.

"A hoser is someone who has this guy who's totally in love with her and kisses the ground she walks on like he was the frickin' Scarlet Pimpernel, but then she goes and dumps him because she's afraid of being seriously loved."

"Shell, did you seriously just make a literary allusion and attempt a psychological analysis in the same sentence?"

"No shit, Sherlock."

"Fuck you, Watson."

Shelley walked away, and Tami picked up her purse and headed out for work. She _had_ to break up with Eric, the way she saw it. What if he insisted on keeping his word and marrying her? If he ended up staying with her out of duty, that would be a fate worse than losing him—to be with someone, day in and day out, who was punching a clock, who was just doing the right thing. Her mom had been like that with her dad, for years, and look where he'd ended up—with a shot gun to his head.

That wasn't going to be Tami, that was for sure.

 **[*]**

The fourth day, Eric stopped calling. Tami hovered by the phone in the morning, hoping it would ring, but it didn't.

She wondered if he'd found another girl.

 **[*]**

By day seven, Tami couldn't take not hearing his voice anymore. She called him at work and said, "I want to be friends still. Can we be friends?"

"I…" He sighed. "I don't want to be friends."

Desperation washed over her "Please? Eric, just…please?"

"Tami, I don't even know what I did wrong."

"You didn't do anything…I just…" How could she explain this? How could she explain _any_ of this? "I just want to be friends. Please?"

"I have a customer." The phone went dead.

 **[*]**

Tami pulled long shifts at the diner, late morning through the afternoon and late into the evening, but not as late as Eric worked. When she got off, she drove by the gas station, slowly, just to get a glimpse of him.

Sometimes he'd be pumping someone's gas, since it wasn't all self-serve in those days. Sometimes he'd be wiping down a windshield, but most of the time, that late at night, the place was desolate, and she could only see his profile through the front window of the quickie mart, where he sat with his feet up on the counter, reading a magazine. Once, she thought he looked up and recognized her car, and she sped off.


	14. Chapter 14

Tami slid into her desk at the front of the lecture hall for her first class of the year in Pysch 101. She'd decided she wanted to be a counselor, and not so she could give out pencils for Happy Half Birthdays or write college recommendation letters, but so that she could help confused and angry kids like she'd been before Eric planted himself on her stoop and refused to leave until he knew she was safe inside. Not that she wasn't _still_ confused, but she wasn't angry anymore, and she was starting to go somewhere in life. She was in college, after all, and this was her first class of her first semester. That was _something._

A thick psychology textbook came down hard on the desk next to her, and she looked up to see Eric Taylor. "Hey, lady," he said as he slid into the seat.

She didn't know he'd chosen to go through with TMU. She thought maybe, after the breakup, he would have belatedly accepted UT's offer. But here he was. Not only was he here, but he was speaking to her. He was actually _speaking_ to her.

And yet all she could think to say was, "You're not seriously taking this class are you?"

"Sure? Why not? I dig psychology."

His weird phraseology unexpectedly put her at ease. "Dig it, huh? I think you're not just in the wrong class. You're in the wrong decade." He smiled, and she continued her playful teasing. "I thought football players only took gut classes."

"Psychology _is_ a gut class."

"We'll see about that. I think I know who's going to be tutoring who this time."

" _Whom_ ," he said, but he smiled when he said it.

His smile made her laugh, and she pushed him playfully by the shoulder. "Does this mean we can be friends?" she asked.

"No." He leaned in and kissed her lips just before the professor assumed the podium.

The man lectured for a full hour and fifteen minutes. Tami heard the names "Freud" and "Jung." That was all.

Eric walked silently beside her after class, until she came to rest by a low brick wall. She sat down, clutching her notebook across her chest, like a breastplate.

He stood in front of her. "I don't want to be friends," he said. "I want more than that."

"I…I thought you'd moved on."

"Really? Because I saw you driving by the gas station a lot. You knew I was working 60-hour weeks. You knew I wasn't out partying and picking up chicks. It's a small town. You would have heard." He put his own notebook down on the wall, and then placed a hand on either side of her. He was so close. "Tami, I was really pissed off at you for a while. I was angry as hell. But even though I was pissed off, I couldn't get over this…this way I feel about you. And then I got to thinking. You said you loved me. I think you meant it. And I don't think you suddenly stopped loving me. I think you just got scared."

And then it simply poured out of her. She told him what she was really afraid of, of the good boy doing the right thing, of trapping him, of the years of resentment that might one day follow. And the worst fear of all - of not being good enough for him.

"Let me tell you something," he said. "You're beautiful. You're smart. You're funny. And you're so damn strong, Tami. I never met anyone as strong as you, what you've been through…and still…" He stood straight and waved a hand around the nearby campus buildings. "Look where you are. Look where you got yourself in such a short time."

Tami looked around at the green grass, the trees starting to turn, the old structures, the words carved in stone above the gates of learning. She turned her face up to the afternoon sun and closed her eyes, felt its warmth on her face. He sat next to her, and she rested her head on his shoulder. "Eric, I just don't…I still don't think as well of myself as you do."

"Well, then give me time to change your mind." He slid an arm around her waist. "We don't have to get _married_. We can just date. We can even take it slow if you need. I can't be _just_ friends, but we can take it slow. You know. Date but not…you know… _ **date.**_ Until you're ready to _**date.**_ "

"But…I don't want you _**dating**_ other girls either. And if _I'm_ not _**dating**_ you - "

" - Then I'll survive somehow, Tami. I've survived this long."

She giggled. "So, really, you don't know what you're missing."

He smiled. "Oh, I have a pretty good guess."

She laughed and kissed his cheek and whispered, "I love you."

 **[*]**

Eric was busy much of their first semester with practice and games and travel. Tami went to all of the home games, of course, and some of the away games, when they were within a 200 mile drive. She had been right about her tutoring prediction. Eric struggled in psychology, and indeed all of his academic classes, because of the demands football placed on his time.

"You need to do well in this class," she told him. "It's a prerequisite for sports psychology, which you'll have to take if you want to be a phys ed major."

"Yeah, I know. And Bio 101 is a prereq for kinesiology and physiology of exercise, but I don't know why, because phylums and genus have nothing to do with sports. They should just let us major in football."

"Well they don't."

One afternoon, she stopped by the house to tutor him. Eric was lucky – he wasn't forced to live in the prison-like dorms that housed most of the students. He'd been given a house he shared with five other players, courtesy of his scholarship. It was still student housing, and still subjected to the same campus rules (12 PM curfew, no opposite sex visitors after 9 PM, and other such nonsense), but it was a lot nicer than the small, box-like, privacy-free room Tami shared with her roommate. Eric even had his own bedroom.

When his housemate Jake answered the door, he offered Tami a beer. In those days, TMU was still a religious school. The "Methodist" part of the name had not yet become a relic of the past. It was also a dry campus, and the students had to sign a yearly "honor pledge" that they would not cheat, drink, or engage in premarital sex. But beer, like love, found a way.

"No thanks."

"So be it," Jake said, and ran a hand through his red hair. "How did Eric manage to get such an incredibly hot girlfriend anyway?"

Jake said things like that a lot. She didn't know where he thought he was going to get with her, or if he just liked idle flirtations. "He sold his soul to the devil," she said.

"A fair exchange."

Tami smiled and headed to Eric's bedroom. He was at his desk reading through _her_ psychology textbook. He had his own, but he read only the highlighted portions of hers for the sake of efficiency. Today she was going to quiz him on the pertinent points.

They studied for a while, but at some point they ended up lying, side by side, in his bed, lips locked, hands exploring above and sometimes beneath clothes. His breath had grown short and raspy, and she was murmuring and pressing herself against him. He pulled away. "If you don't want to…you know…we better stop this now."

She bit her lip. "Can't we just…kiss some more?"

He sat up on the edge of the bed, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, and caught his breath. "Tami, it's too hard."

She giggled.

"I mean _difficult_."

She sat up next to him and rested her head on his shoulder. "I'm sorry it's so difficult. Thank you for being understanding. You do understand, don't you?"

"I understand it has something to do with your feelings of self-worth. I just don't understand _how_."

Neither did she, really, considering she'd done it before, and with guys she'd loved less than Eric, guys she hadn't even loved at all. But her world was changing, had been changing, and this decision of hers to remain abstinent was an enigmatic part of that revolution.

"But I don't _have_ to understand ot, babe," he said. "I just have to…be disciplined. Like I am with football or exercise or work. It's just…a lot harder in this _particular_ area. And it's kind of embarrassing. I'm the only virgin at TMU."

"Eric, come on."

"I swear, I'm not saying it to pressure you. I told you I'd wait as long as you need, and I will. I just…it's just the way I feel sometimes. It's _embarrassing_."

"Why should you be embarrassed? No one knows you're a virgin. Everyone _assumes_ we're having sex."

"Yeah, but it's like the 7-year-old with the secret bed wetting problem who lives in terror of being invited to a slumber party. When guys start to talk about it…I've got nothing to say."

"So not having sex with me is like wetting the bed?"

He laughed. "Well…"

"Ew. Gross."

He laughed harder.

"Listen," she said. "It's not true. You are _not_ the only virgin at TMU."

"I'm pretty sure I am."

"Some people take that pledge seriously. And some people don't want to do it for other reasons. And some people can't _get_ anyone to do it with them."

Eric grunted. "Yeah. Like me."

" _No_ , not like you. I know at least a dozen girls who would happily hook-up with you in a second if you asked." She frowned and looked down at the floor. "You've got a lot of opportunity actually."

"Hey," he said and slid an arm around her waist. "Hey, I don't want any of those girls." He pressed his forehead against hers. His voice was low and husky. "I want you."

When she kissed him, she was crying a little. He wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. "I'm sorry if you feel like I'm pressuring you. I don't mean to do that. I want it to do be right for you. I really do. Because I love you, Tami."

She kissed him softly, and then more deeply, and then a little hungrily.

He pulled his head back. "Let's go study in the library," he said. "Or anyplace that doesn't have a bed."


	15. Chapter 15

Tami and Eric flip flopped academically. She made the dean's list her first semester, while he struggled to maintain his C+ average. She felt better about herself than she had in years. When they both went back home for spring break, Tami suggested they drive down to the lake one night, roast marshmallows, and look at the stars.

After the sun had set in a shimmering haze and the campfire had ignited the dawning darkness with tongues of white and yellow, they lay down on their backs atop an unzipped sleeping bag to look at the stars. In the expansive Texas small town sky above them, Eric pointed out the milk way.

Tami turned on her side and began kissing his neck, and he quickly lost interest in astronomy.

"Mhmmmm…." He murmured. "Did you bring me here to seduce me?"

"Do you require seduction?"

"No," he said, rolling on his side and placing a hand on her hip. He kissed her gently. "I am the lover. _You_ are the beloved."

She laughed because it was a goofy thing to say, but also because she was happy.

"I'm not trying to be funny, you know," he said.

"I know. That's what I love about you." She slid still closer, until their bodies were pressed tightly together. "I'm ready."

"Ready? As in…. _ready_?"

She bit her lip, smiled surprisingly shyly, and nodded. "Thank you for being so patient with me this whole time."

"Are you _sure_?" he asked, as though he hadn't been expecting it, which of course he must have been. When she had called and told him to bring the sleeping bag, she also happened to mention that she'd gone back on the pill a month ago. She loved him for asking anyway.

Afterwards, when they were lying entwined on top of the sleeping bag and beneath a blanket, he whispered, "Thank you."

Tami was a little stunned. It wasn't that the sex with Eric had been "mind-blowing," or that he had been a "skilled lover," but somehow...somehow she felt so very differently than she had ever felt before. And, frankly, it scared her. Instinctively, she reached for the cynicism, like an old, familiar shield. " _Thank you?_ What a weird thing to say to someone after sex."

"Why?" he asked.

"It's a little strangely polite, don't you think?"

Eric dislodged himself from her and raised himself up on one arm to look down. "I said _thank you_ , Tami, because you just _gave_ yourself to me." He put a hand on her cheek, stroked it tenderly, and searched her eyes. "Hey," he said softly, "Hey, you _do_ know you're valuable, right?"

She looked away and swallowed. "Sure." She felt him ease back down on the blanket. She turned and wrapped a leg around him and buried her head against his shoulder so he wouldn't see the tears beginning to form in her eyes.

 _Valuable_ , she thought. _Tami Hayes is valuable._

 **[*]**

Tami excelled in all her classes and, early in her sophomore year, she declared a double major in psychology and administration. Eric focused on football. TMU's team was so poor that Eric was the guaranteed choice for first string. He garnered quite a bit of attention his sophomore year for both his quarterbacking and leadership skills, and especially for the dramatic way he turned the team around. When he wasn't performing on the field, he could often be seen at the sidelines, head to head with the coach, discussing plays.

By the end of the season, there was talk. Whispers that scouts were in the stands, that they had their eyes on Eric. He was expecting to get drafted as soon as he was eligible, at the end of his junior year. He let his grades slip still further. There was time for football and for Tami. Nothing else mattered to him. He'd seen the handwriting on the wall. His future was in professional football. He'd be wise. He'd play as long as he could, save as hard as he could, and live off the largess for years to come.

During the first home game of their junior year, Eric was sacked. That wasn't a problem in and of itself. The problem was, he didn't get up right away. And then a crowd of refs and coaches and players started to gather around him where he lay on the field. And then the stretcher came out, tilting this way and that between the hands of the running medics, dipping like Tami's heart.

Eric wouldn't let Tami pick him up from the hospital when he was released. He insisted that his teammates would get him. But he showed up later at her dorm, after visiting hours were long over, seriously drunk and hobbling on crutches.

He threw his crutches down on her floor, vomited in and around her trashcan, hopped on one leg over to her bed, fell face down, and passed out there.

In the morning, Tami put a glass of water by the bed and left to get him some fresh coffee. When she got back, he was gone. He had left her a handwritten note on a sheet of college-ruled paper he'd torn from one of her three-ring binders. "They say the rehab will take at least ten months and I'll never be able to play quite as well again. My scholarship is being revoked next semester. No chance of going pro. It's all over. Sorry I was an ass to you last night. Wouldn't be surprised if we're over too. - Eric"

She tried calling him over at his apartment, but the housemate who answered said he wasn't home. When she called a second time two hours later, a different roommate answered and also said he wasn't home. "Jake, are you telling me the truth?" she asked.

"Nah. He's home, Tami," Jake admitted. "And he's a wreck. I don't mean hungover. I mean, yeah, he's hungover. But that's not how he's a wreck...you oughta get over here."

 **[*]**

When Tami came over to the house, Jake let her in and mumbled, "Good luck." She didn't knock when she went in to Eric's room. He was sitting at his desk, grimacing, his forehead leaned against his hand. Two of the football trophies that had previously lined the shelf above his desk were in pieces on the floor. There was a hole in the drywall just to the left of his window and scratches on the wood desk and on the metal frame of his bed.

"What'd you do?" she asked as she shut the door behind herself, "just pound them until they broke?"

"Yeah, Tami, because that's the kind of guy I _really_ am." He dropped his hand on to the desk and looked at her with weary eyes. "The kind of guy who loses it and breaks shit, the kind of guy who shows up in the middle of the night and throws up all over his girlfriend's floor."

"You mostly hit the trashcan."

"The kind of guy who builds his whole life around one goal and doesn't have a backup plan when it goes south."

She came and stood behind him and wrapped her arms around him. He didn't lean back. His body was rigid. "You've got a backup plan," she reassured him. "You can get your B.A. You can pull your grades up now that you don't have practice. You can get a loan for next semester and senior year. Get your degree. Start a career."

"With a major in physical education?"

She slid her arms away and came and sat on his desk in front of him. "Yeah, of course," she said. He took his hand off the desk and rested it on his upper leg. She noticed the tan line where his high school state championship ring used to be. She wondered what he'd done with it. "You can teach and coach with that," she continued. He looked away from her, turning his eyes toward the hole he'd somehow put in the drywall. "That's what it prepares you for, right?"

He turned his eyes back to hers. "What," he spat, "be one of those little boys who never grows up, just goes on to become a coach, always thinking some stupid game is important?" He was throwing her words back at her, those words she'd spoken in high school before they were even friends, on the cracked stoop of a house she'd left three years ago.

"No, babe," she said, reaching out to stroke his unshaven cheek, feeling the coarse bristle beneath her fingertips. "Be one of those men who sculpts the characters of boys, who understands that football is more than just a game. The kind of man who makes a real difference in the world through the mark he leaves on the players he trains. I believe in you. I don't just believe in you, I _know_ you. And I know you'll be that kind of coach, because you have a full heart, and you have a good conscience. You're disciplined, you're hard working, and you know how to persevere. You'd make the ideal coach, babe, and you'd be doing something even more important than if you had been able to keep playing."

She saw the strange play of emotions in his face as she said these words - the struggle to accept the compliment she was giving him, the fear that he wasn't worthy of her words, the gratitude that she was saying them, the hope that they might be true. She realized with a sudden pang of compassion that he wasn't used to encouragement, all those roaring fans notwithstanding. It wasn't something he had gotten at home, any more than she had. No matter how much Eric had accomplished, no matter how hard he had striven, he had never been quite good enough for his father.

It was funny that she had once thought she and Eric were too different, when they had really been so much alike after all. Both had struggled to believe in themselves after being battered by painful family situations, both had tried to deal with their insecurities partly by pretending to be someone else, Tami the rebel who didn't need anyone or anything and who didn't secretly want to be romanced and respected, Eric the perfect, All-American boy who could juggle it all while staying on the narrow path and never cracking under the pressure.

But both had begun to crack, _would_ have cracked entirely, would have eventually split straight down the seams if Mo's car had not been in the shop that day. Tami had known as early as high school that Eric had pulled her out of a ditch, but she hadn't realized until this moment that she had pulled Eric out of that same ditch, that they had climbed out of it together, supporting one another. And now they were in another ditch, and they could get out of this one too - together.

Tami could tell Eric didn't know what to say, didn't know how to respond to her praise. So she just invited him to the bed and made love to him, slowly and tenderly, straddling him carefully so as not to touch his injured knee. When both were satisfied and he had caught his breath enough to speak, he whispered, "Thank you." She kissed him before the "you" was quite out and slid carefully off of him. She lay next to him, against his good leg, rested her head on his shoulder, and extended a delicate arm across his chest, letting her fingers tickle his ribs. His arms surrounded her. They lay there silently for a while, until Eric asked, "How can you not be at all mad at me? I was a jerk, showing up like that, throwing up all over, just...passing out."

"You got some really bad news."

"Yeah, but that's no excuse for being an ass to you. And then I broke those trophies, put a hole in the wall, like some kid throwing a wild tantrum. How is it you're not disappointed in me?"

This time it was Tami who dislodged herself and raised herself up on one arm to look down at him. "Hey," she said softly. "Hey, you _do_ know you don't have to be perfect, right? Not with _me_ you don't."

He didn't answer her; he just did what Tami had done that first time they made love, when he had told her she was valuable. He hid his face. But her words must have meant something to him, because the next day he proposed.


	16. Chapter 16

Eric took Tami to the campus lake, which was coated in a tapestry of red and gold leaves. They had on their college sweatshirts, and Eric's arm was draped around her shoulders, his crutches tossed to one side, as the orange red hues dissolved into the water. He wanted to row her out in the middle of the lake, he told her later, but he figured he couldn't do it with the bum knee.

When Eric started fishing in his pocket, the soft starlight had begun to filter down through the tree branches. He held out the ring to her. "It was my mother's," he said. "I hope it's okay. I can buy you a new one someday, but I thought maybe we could use this for a few years, use the money I've saved up for tuition instead…so we don't have to start our life with so much debt."

"It's beautiful," she said. "But do you have a question for me?"

"Oh, yeah, sorry. I'd get down on one knee, but…my one knee's kind of shot and if I kneel on the other one I've still got to bend this one."

She laughed lightly. "That's okay."

"So…then…Will you marry me?" He took her hand and slid the ring on her finger. "If we get married in July, we can get married student housing starting in August, be together our senior year. Save some money."

"You know, I haven't actually said yes yet."

"Oh."

"You're awfully sure of yourself," Tami teased.

"I…uh…please?"

"Well, since you said please…I suppose I can't say no."

She loved his smile, the modest joy it expressed, that adorable look that said, "I'm happy, but I'm still not quite sure if I deserve to be. God, I hope this feeling lasts." She leaned in and kissed him. He reached around her and put a light hand on the back of her head, gently urging her into a deeper kiss.

When their lips parted, they sat leaning their foreheads against one another, his hands on either side of her head, submerged in her hair, her hands on his hips. "Let's not wait," she said.

He pulled a short distance away to search her eyes. "What do you mean?"

"Let's just elope during winter break. I want to go to bed with you. I want to wake up with you. I don't want to sneak around the campus to have sex. I don't want to have it in your bedroom with Jake two doors down. I want to be able to have it on the kitchen counter if I want to."

He grinned.

"Not that I particularly want to. But _if_ I want to."

"Okay, but…elope? I mean, it's only September. Winter break is still three months away. That's enough time to plan a wedding."

"I don't want a formal wedding."

"I…I thought every girl planned her wedding from the time she was ten."

Tami rolled her eyes. "Do I strike you as a conventional sort of girl?"

"Tami," he said deliberately, his hand on her shoulder, looking in her eyes, "you're more conventional than you think. We're having a formal wedding. You're gonna regret it one day if we don't. I know you a little bit by now."

She sighed. "But then my mom's going to want to be all involved and it's going to drive me crazy!"

"Well…you know…if we do winter…we rush it…you'll only have to endure her meddling for three months. It can be small, we'll keep it small – "

"Eric, _you_ want a formal wedding. Don't you?"

"I, uh…" He laughs. "Well, I haven't been planning it since I was ten, or anything, but I always thought I'd get married in a church, you, know, before God and witnesses and…it's a big commitment. I mean it to be a lifelong commitment. I kind of want to make a point of it. And…I'd kind of like to see you in a wedding dress." She smiles. "We don't have to spend a lot. We can keep it small. And, uh…Shelley's gonna pitch a fit if we elope and she doesn't get to be your maid of honor."

"Okay. We'll do it. New Year's wedding? Then probably not a lot of people will come and we can definitely keep it small. And maybe we can do a honeymoon later, on summer vacation, after we save up a little money."

Mrs. Hayes was thrilled when Tami told her. "I'm so glad you're marrying a good Christian boy," she said. In fact, Eric could do no wrong in his mother-in-law's eyes, at least until that third Thanksgiving after they were married, when Tami's mom insulted Tami right in front of him, dropped some biting innuendo about her promiscuous past, and Eric scraped his chair back against the tile floor, stood up, and said, "I will not hear my wife spoken to like that in my presence ever again."

Eric's dad was less enamored by the announcement. He'd given Eric that ring after his mother died with the assumption he was going to use it to propose to Nicole. Mr. Taylor said, "If you're busy being married, how are you going to concentrate on getting past this injury and getting back on that field your senior year?" When Eric told him there was no way he was going to be able to get back on that field, that he was planning to coach instead of being a player, his father shook his head. His senior year, when Eric called to tell his Dad the TMU coach was letting him shadow him and even making him an "honorary assistant coach," his father told him he could have gone pro if he had just gotten back on that field, if only he had "pushed past it," if only he hadn't been such a quitter. Those were the exact words Eric's father had used, "If you hadn't been such a quitter."

Eric didn't speak to his father for a long time after that. Tami didn't quite understand Eric's silence. She understood what a jerk Eric's father had been to him, and how much his betrayal of Eric's mother had hurt him. But she didn't understand not talking to your father _at all,_ especially if your father kept calling. Eric's father had been too critical a man, had pushed Eric too hard, but at least he had been there. He hadn't simply checked out.

Three months before Julie was born, Tami talked Eric into calling up his dad to let him know he was about to be a grandfather. Eric was glad she had because, to his surprise, the man said he was sorry for all the bitterness that had passed between them, that he was proud of his son, that even though Eric hadn't made it to the NFL, he'd accomplished the most important thing a man could accomplish - he'd honestly provided for his family. It was, Eric told Tami, the third time his father had ever said he was sorry, but the very first he could ever remember the man saying he was _proud_ of him.

After that, they kept in touch, with brief monthly phone calls, and Eric's dad sent his granddaughters gifts for their birthdays and Christmas. That was the extent of their relationship. Tami knew Eric sometimes regretted the hatred he had once nursed for his father, regretted that they hadn't been closer, that Julie and Gracie had never had a grandparent as a regular and involved part of their lives. Yet it was probably for the best, Tami realized. The man's years of criticism had done a number on Eric, had ripped a hole in his self-confidence that Tami would spend years trying to fill. What if he turned that same criticism on the girls?

Eric and Tami spared their daughters their own parents, built their own secure nuclear nest away from Tami's mom and Eric's dad. They vowed to raise their children differently and prayed that their girls showed them more mercy than they had shown their own parents.

"Because we'll still probably screw them up," Eric said one day as he sat on the couch with an infant tucked up in one arm like a football. "No matter how hard we try, we'll still screw them up."

Tami settled her head against her husband's shoulder and kissed his cheek. "Yes, but at least we'll do it in a completely different way than our parents did."

And they laughed, and looked into each other's twinkling eyes, and were glad not to have to pretend.

 **THE END**


End file.
